Fun with ATSC Transport Streams

Fun with ATSC MPEG Transport Streams

This page documents what I have found you can do with mpeg transport streams once they have been decoded from over-the-air HDTV signals.

HDTV2MPEG2 Convert to standard mpeg
HDTV2DVD Convert to 720x480 DVD
ProjectX

One thing to look for is a program guide. One software package, pcdhtvr or "ATSC Transport Stream Tools for Linux" has a neat utility called "atscut", the container utility. After I got 15 minutes of "24" in a file called 24.ts, running atscut with the -g option:

$ atscut -g 24.ts

Returned this:

Program Guide DUP remove pg_idx 22
Old pg 22 new no-DUP pg1 22

PSIP guide dump, last STT Mon Apr 10 21:17:55 2006

   pg1  pgo  Pgm Date             Name          Minutes  Description
  0400 000101F6 x.1 Mon Apr 10 20:00  60 Prison Break     |
* 0401 000101FE x.1 Mon Apr 10 22:00  60 Fox 11 Eyewitnes>|
* 0402 000101FA x.1 Mon Apr 10 21:00  60 24               |
* 0408 0001020E x.1 Tue Apr 11 00:30  30 Paid Programming |
* 0409 00010216 x.1 Tue Apr 11 01:30  30 The Simpsons     |
* 040A 000101FE x.1 Mon Apr 10 22:00  60 Fox 11 Eyewitnes>|
  040B 00010202 x.1 Mon Apr 10 23:00  30 Sex and the City |
  040C 00010206 x.1 Mon Apr 10 23:30  30 The Bernie Mac S>|
  040D 0001020A x.1 Tue Apr 11 00:00  30 Malcolm in the M>|
* 040E 00010212 x.1 Tue Apr 11 01:00  30 Seinfeld         |
  0410 00010216 x.1 Tue Apr 11 01:30  30 The Simpsons     |
* 0411 0001042E x.1 Tue Apr 11 04:30  30 Becker           |
* 0412 0001041A x.1 Tue Apr 11 02:00  30 King Of The Hill |
  0413 0001041E x.1 Tue Apr 11 02:30  30 Will and Grace   |
* 0414 00010426 x.1 Tue Apr 11 03:30  30 Extra            |
* 0415 00010422 x.1 Tue Apr 11 03:00  30 Home Improvement |
* 0416 0001042A x.1 Tue Apr 11 04:00  30 Elimidate        |
  0418 0001042E x.1 Tue Apr 11 04:30  30 Becker           |
* 0419 0001063E x.1 Tue Apr 11 07:30  30 Paid Programming |
* 041A 00010632 x.1 Tue Apr 11 05:00  60 Shephard's Chape>|
  041B 00010636 x.1 Tue Apr 11 06:00  60 Good Morning Wes>|
  041C 0001063A x.1 Tue Apr 11 07:00  30 Paid Programming |
 IN  1455710508 bytes
OUT           0 bytes

Another very useful program that can open transport streams, do editing and conversions is avidemux2.