The Short Story:

Toppy FileMaker can generate the required .nav and .inf support files which are needed by the Topfield 7000 and 7100 PVRs to play mpeg files which have been edited or created elsewhere.

Download current version v1.4

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The Long Story:

Toppy FileMaker is a utility for the Topfield 7000 series (7000, 7050, 7100 tested) PVRs. It is based on Australian units, but may well work with others including 7710s from the UK/Europe. It was previously known and available as MakeInfo. MakeInfo is now superseded by Toppy FileMaker.

The 7000 series can playback any TS (Transport Stream) mode mpeg file, but to do so it needs to have available two support files - a filename.info and a filename.nav. The .info provides the PVR with sufficient information for playback, and the .nav provides information for fastforward, skipping etc. Various users of the Topfield Australain Forum have contributed to the back-engineering of the .info and .nav files, (most notably StevePER2, deanglej and myself) and Toppy FileMaker uses what has been learned to create the required .info and .nav support files. This allows any TS mode mpeg to be downloaded to a 7000 series PVR and be played back. Uses have included using other programs to convert home movies, divx and other files into TS mode mpeg for storage and playback on the 7000.

The Toppy FileMaker utility lets you manually edit the required information, but will also auto-discover most if not all of it for you. It also supports Topfield 5000/6000 series .rec files, reading all the required information from the .rec file, and using this to create the .info. This will let you transfer files from a 5000/6000 to a 7000 series. Where the input file is not a .rec, the program will read the file and work out the right information - this is 90% at the moment, but some files with Dolby Digital audio may trip it up. The program has been integrated with the Explorer for 7100 program also available from the Australian Topfield forum - if you install it in the same folder as the explorer.exe program, when you right click a file in explorer's file list, FileMaker will appear as an option, and will run with the selected file pre-loaded.

With no documentation available to the format of the .nav, while the program will generate a working .nav file based on our reverse engineering efforts, there are some remaining fine points yet to fully work out, which may mean some skipping or fast forward may not be perfect. There is a choice to output an empty .nav file, which is fast to generate, but this means that when playing the video back, fast forward and various file skipping functions will not operate if you choose this.

The download includes a setup file - it will install the FileMaker program, and will also install the required elements of the .Net framework for you (which is quite large and may take a while - it also needs internet access to do so, as it downloads the required files direct from Microsoft). The zip also contains the ToppyFileMaker.exe file - it may be that this is all you need if you have the .net framework installed on your PC. You can try just running the .exe directly, but if that gives funny errors or doesn't run, please run the setup.exe file, and then try the application again. The setup will create an entry in your programs menu.

The program carries some help, but please post on the Australian Topfield forum if you need assistance or have any questions, or just want to provide feedback.

Release 1.1 has some minor fixes - primarily it now supports output from VLC player. Download the setup file for new installs, or the .exe is provided and should work for those upgrading from the previous.
Release 1.2 adds a diagnostics menu for creating support files I can analyse if you are having problems, improvements in handling of AC3 files, and a verbose logging mode.
Release 1.3 adds support for multiple files - i.e. it can now deal with a whole directory of files unattended, as well as fixing a couple of minor issues
Release 1.4 is currently a test release testing the production of .mpg.inf files for the 2400 and 7100+ series machines, and while this is not functioning, the release is usable as is.

If you want similar software to FileMaker for the Mac or Linux, the following link is the place to go http://www.harshbutfair.org/software/. This was developed by itopfield forum member StevePER2 who was my collaborator in reverse engineering the .nav file. I haven't used it, but understand it is command line based and works very well.