Recover video files on external HD

A dude brought me his external hard drive and he said it's full of movies (over 80 of 'em). He had DirecTV and recorded the movies that way. He's now switching to DishNetwork and he doesn't want to lose the movies. I guess with the DirecTV he could watch the movies at any time thru the TV receiver and DishNetwork uses a different format and the files would be unwatchable. When the drive is connected to PC, it can't be read either. It shows up as a new drive but can't be browsed. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

My guess is DirecTV uses a proprietary file system & file format that can't be read by conventional PC software. Maybe check out their site for help?

 

Yeah, I pretty much figured that.... I was just wondering if maybe someone out there had done this before and had some slick tip that would allow the files to be read on a PC; we could then burn 'em to DVD or recode 'em to a universal format....

 

I'm guessing you have view hidden files and folders selected already. If not try that. Also try the hide file extensions of unknown file types option as well. Vista and XP both have this option I believe. XP for sure.

Can you view the properties of the hard drive? What file format is it in? NTFS, or other?

Did he have a HD DVR reciever?

I personally do not know a whole lot about them myself. But I can ask my techy friends about it.

Hope this helps.

 

Me neither. rolleyes I don't have the drive here at moment (it's at work; I'm at home) so I can't really answer those questions. I didn't get a chance to really spend any time with it yesterday other than plugging it in and realizing that I couldn't read it (which I expected to happen). I'll be messing with it in an hour or two and will post more info then....
Thanks.

 

Maybe try accessing via linux. Many DirecTV subscribers use TiVo dvr's. If that is what he used then the drive should have been formatted under linux.

 

Yup... Linux was the key! I booted to a Knoppix CD and was able to access the files. There's a bunch of folders, and each folder has these files in it: bm - cat - tsp - wtt and in each folder the tsp file is the biggest by far (like it's 1.9gb or bigger and all the others are under 1mb, some are under 1kb). I'm assuming that the tsp files are the actual movies, but how can I convert 'em or burn 'em to a DVD for playback in a standard DVD player? I tried to play them back in Knoppix using MPlayer, but after the MPlayer window opened, nothing else happened. It just sat there and I couldn't close it. I could minimize/maximize, but I couldn't close it. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em!!
THANKS!

 

http://www.lyberty.com/mediatech/projects/tsp-to-mpeg.html

I'm not sure if that link will help or not... looks interesting, though. Once you get it to MPEG format, it should be easy to convert it to a DVD movie.

 

:highfive :cool :-D
OH _ MY _ GOD ! ! ! You're my f :*** g hero!!!! If I had that link a couple days ago..... oh man! Too cool!! The guy who owns this drive full of movies is gonna love me!!!! If I can get these movies to MPEGs, it's all gravy after that!!!!
THANK YOU ! ! ! ! ! !
:celebrate :hyper :dancer :dood

 

Hi dlb,
I have an external HD with files bm, cat, tsp and wtt just like you did a while back. The link for the site listed do not work any more, could you let me know how to convert them so I can burn them to a DVD. I try the Zoom Player, but it would not load the files, looking to convert them to MPEG or VOB

Thanks
DasFox