I have been looking for an easy way to convert my "Forced" backup of my Tablo HD. Don't want to revisit the reason I have this backup of my Tablo's HD, just understand I have it on another HD.
Since this backup isn't much good for anything as is, I have been looking and now found a significant part to getting this content into my PLEX server. There are alot of apps (programs) that can work with TS files, but surprisingly, none that I normally use or others I have found work with hundreds of these TS files at a time very well. Reaching back into my pre-windows days, I tried the simple Copy command, which is very fast, but I just didn't find a way to hold proper sequence when they "concatenate" (big word for join or merge) the TS files.
Anyway, looked a bit more and came across an old DOS/Windows program I had used in the early 90's. The name was change from what it was, but so many things seemed to be familiar so I did a bit of checking and it was the same program, with alot of updates of course. Anyway, download it and tried the combine command and it worked just as fast as the copy command did, but all the TS files were combined properly.
After I make the joined TS file, I just look at the meta.txt file using JSON Formatter & Validator to get the proper content info. Rename the joined TS file following PLEX conventions and it is ready to go -- Well amost.
Pretty easy and pretty fast.
The "Well amost" is, I am still working through some steps needed to run this file though MCEBuddy to convert them to MP4 and remove commercials, but that will be easy too I'm sure. For those who don't already know, MCEBuddy is a program used to convert Windows Media Center TV Captures into an IMDb recogized title, converting to MP4, and removing commercials. It does this by setting up source and destination folders where content is moved from one to the other, while completing the above mentioned conversions. It is a fairly good program for doing this, but it has alot of settings that need to be right to do it properly and in a reasonible amount of time.
So, anyone wishing to make backups by hand, this will work. Maybe a few minutes per show/movie, but at least it can be done regardless of where the physical files might be. And, there isn't any loss of quality, sync or content at all.
Here's a list of the programs mentioned and links:
"Total Commander" http://www.ghisler.com/
"JSON Formatter & Validator" http://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/
"MCEBuddy" https://mcebuddy2x.codeplex.com/
Post back here with questions if you have any.
-Rodger