Problem with selected Recording quality

[sso]

Using SageTV V4.0.0.56with the Sapphire ATI Theatrix 550 Pro I am having problems limiting the size of the recordings.

The following recording qualities are available for selection:

• Best - DVD@3,0 GB/h
• DVD Long Play - DVD@2,4 GB/h
• Great - DVD@2,0 GB/h
• DVD Extra Long Play - DVD@1,6 GB/h
• Good - DVD@1,4 GB/h
• Fair - DVD@0,9 GB/h
• SVCD Standard Play - MPEG-2@1,1 GB/h
• SVCD Long Play - MPEG-2@0,9 GB/h
• SVCD Extra Long Play - MPEG-2@0,7 GB/h
• MPEG2 Max Quality - MPEG-2 PS@5,9 GB/h
• CVD - MPEG-2 PS@1,3 GB/h
• VCD - VCD@0,6 GB/h

I have tried a number of these amongst others the "Fair", but do not obtain the high compression ratios:
An example: A recording of 1h40 is 4.2 GB, ie 2,48 GB/h.
Having done a couple of more trials, it seems like all recordings are performed at appx. 2,3 GB/h, independant of what is selected in the setup.

Whats wrong?

Cheers

Stephen

[mike1961]

Are you setting the default quality for Sage or perhaps for a specific individual tuner card is overriding the default quality you set.

Mike

[sso]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Are you setting the default quality for Sage or perhaps for a specific individual tuner card is overriding the default quality you set.

Mike

Im setting the default quality inside SAGE setup.

Of course the compression is done on the tuner card, but I was under the impression that SAGE was controlling this... Does it not?

/SSO

[blade]

Originally Posted by sso

Im setting the default quality inside SAGE setup.

Of course the compression is done on the tuner card, but I was under the impression that SAGE was controlling this... Does it not?

/SSO

Yes, Sage controls it. There is an overall rate that you set as the default then each favorite or manual recording allows you to select a rate for it that will overide your designated default rate. For example if you're default is Fair that's what it would record all shows at; however if you have a favorite or manual recording set for Good it will use that rate for that particular favorite.

I don't know much about your capture card, but not all cards support all of the capture rates listed in Sage. If you select a capture rate the card doesn't support then I think Sage will record using the last rate selected that the card actually supports.

Also some of the rates are variable instead of constant so the file size will fluctuate a good bit so they won't be exactly the size listed.

Of course if you change the settings and none of them have any affect then you have a problem somewhere.

[sso]

Originally Posted by blade

Of course if you change the settings and none of them have any affect then you have a problem somewhere.

See this is more or less my conclusion as well. The problem is how to solve it.
Anyone has any ideas?

Sage records beautifully, but it really does take up too much space on the disk...

S.

[sso]

Ok, Apparently I had a driver issue that caused problems with the ATI Theatrix selection of recording mode.

• Best - DVD@3,0 GB/h
• DVD Long Play - DVD@2,4 GB/h
• Great - DVD@2,0 GB/h
• DVD Extra Long Play - DVD@1,6 GB/h
• Good - DVD@1,4 GB/h
• Fair - DVD@0,9 GB/h
• SVCD Standard Play - MPEG-2@1,1 GB/h
• SVCD Long Play - MPEG-2@0,9 GB/h
• SVCD Extra Long Play - MPEG-2@0,7 GB/h
• MPEG2 Max Quality - MPEG-2 PS@5,9 GB/h
• CVD - MPEG-2 PS@1,3 GB/h
• VCD - VCD@0,6 GB/h

The above qualities are built in.
I assume they are structured internally in the same format as described in the hauppage configuration HPquality.txt note, i.e. according to the syntax: mmc/python2_encoding/...

Is there any chance of getting information on how these are actually defined in order to use these as a starting point for experimenting.

For example the "SVCD Long Play" does not give very good results (squares highly visible.) whereas the "Fair" seems far better, and this despite the fact that they are appx. the same compression rate. I would thus like to be sure that I would be starting in my experiments from the "Fair" and working from there, instead of "SVCD Long Play".

Have the default (built in) quality settings been defined anywhere?

Cheers

Thanks

S.

[mike1961]

SSO - you really should not be overly concerned about file size. What I do is record everything in 3.2 GB/hour on one hard drive (my D drive on the file server). Then anything I want to put in permanent storage for my media library I just convert to MPEG 4 format and put that on my C drive.

In my opinion that is really the best way to go. For one thing, fragmentation on my C drive is always minimal. MPEG 4 looks great and I cannot tell the difference between that and 3.2 gb / hour. My MPEG 4 conversions are about 240 megabytes per hour. So, a two hour movie at around 6.4 gigs gets converted to about 480 megabytes and thrown on my C Drive. I then use the Sage GermSage to view the mpeg 4 H264 format in Nero ShowTime (it looks a lot better than DIVX or XVID). I know some on this board compress it even further to around 3 megs per minute but I prefer 4 megs per minute to get a slightly higher resolution and I cannot tell the difference between that and 3.2 gigs/hour. I have tested this and anything that does not look good in the mpeg4 file did not look good in the original file either (probably due to the rains we've had affecting the signal from the satellite or something). Overall they loook really good.

I have 2 - 400 gig hard drives. So, I could get around 800 movies easily on the first hard drive and the second hard drive I could get about 130 hours for temporary movies / videos that I don't want for permanent storage. I may decide to try 2 gigs an hour on my D drive but continue to change the recording quality for movies I want to keep at 3.2 gigs/hour. You want to start with the best quality before doing the mpeg4 conversion but anything above 3.2 gigs doesn't make much difference because I don't have high def cable/satellite in and that becomes the bottleneck for quality. Also - hard drives keep getting cheaper and the 500 gb drives are starting to drop compared to 400 gb drives so expansion or adding another drive is also always another option. But, in general, you should not need to worry about recording quality.

Mike

[antplugger]

I would like to figure this out as well -I have two Avermedia A16A's that seem to be stuck at 6GB/hr no matter what I set for recording quality.

So thats about 20GB for a football game, which I then have to try to turn into 4.7GB to burn on a DVD (anyone have any suggestions as to how I do that ? - tools etc)

Thanks for any help

[mike1961]

AntPlugger - like SSO did, reinstall the drivers. Better yet, check the website for driver updates. Otherwise, you could always just get a hauppauge card (or ATI or some other) for around $50. Otherwise, you could easily convert it to mpeg 4 format where it could fit on a CD.

Frankly - it would be unacceptable to me if my recordings took 6 gigs/hour not only because of the disk space, but also because of the useless network traffic it creates. I can't see 6 gigs/hour being any better than 3 unless you have high def otherwise it's a complete waste of CPU time, network traffic and disk space.

Mike

[antplugger]

Thanks Mike, Just rebuilt the PC from the ground up - It was time...

I have 2 x PVR-150 and they respond to the quality changes its just the 2 x Avermedia Hybrid A16A's. What rates are other people seeing for HD recordings ?

MIKE: On another note, what to you use to convert to MPEG 4 ?

Cheers

[antplugger]

Can anyone confirm what I just read over on the MCE forum ? They reckon that adjustment of recording quality in a function of analog and digital HD is what it is and basically gets streamed straight to disk irrespective of setup. They say its the way HDTV card work !

I'm confused....

[blade]

Originally Posted by antplugger

Can anyone confirm what I just read over on the MCE forum ? They reckon that adjustment of recording quality in a function of analog and digital HD is what it is and basically gets streamed straight to disk irrespective of setup. They say its the way HDTV card work !

I'm confused....

You can't adjust the capture rate for HD material. With SDTV the capture card is encoding the show; however, HD material is already encoded when you receive it and is just written to the disk.

If you don't keep the shows very long just pick up another drive they're pretty cheap. For stuff you want to keep you might look into converting them to mpeg4.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by sso

The above qualities are built in.
I assume they are structured internally in the same format as described in the hauppage configuration HPquality.txt note, i.e. according to the syntax: mmc/python2_encoding/...

Is there any chance of getting information on how these are actually defined in order to use these as a starting point for experimenting.

Have the default (built in) quality settings been defined anywhere?

I guess the default qualities aren't in the properties file any more. I believe this is how they are all defined:

mmc/python2_encoding/Best=videobitrate\=6000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/CVD=videobitrate\=2500000|peakvideobitrate\=3000000|vbr\=1|width\=352|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=0|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/DVD\ Extra\ Long\ Play=videobitrate\=3000000|peakvideobitrate\=4400000|vbr\=1|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/DVD\ Long\ Play=videobitrate\=4800000|peakvideobitrate\=6000000|vbr\=1|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/DVD\ Standard\ Play=videobitrate\=6400000|peakvideobitrate\=8000000|vbr\=1|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Handheld\ High\ Quality=videobitrate\=200000|peakvideobitrate\=200000|vbr\=0|width\=176|height\=144|audiobitrate\=64|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|fps\=15|ipb\=2|deinterlace\=1|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Handheld\ Medium\ Quality=videobitrate\=128000|peakvideobitrate\=128000|vbr\=0|width\=176|height\=144|audiobitrate\=64|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|fps\=15|ipb\=2|deinterlace\=1|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Home\ Theater\ High\ Quality=videobitrate\=3000000|peakvideobitrate\=3000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|ipb\=2|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Home\ Theater\ Highest\ Quality=videobitrate\=4000000|peakvideobitrate\=4000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|ipb\=2|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Home\ Theater\ Medium\ Quality=videobitrate\=2000001|peakvideobitrate\=2000001|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=128|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|ipb\=2|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Portable\ High\ Quality=videobitrate\=2000000|peakvideobitrate\=2000000|vbr\=0|width\=640|height\=480|audiobitrate\=128|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|ipb\=2|deinterlace\=1|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/DivX\u00AE\ Certified\ Portable\ Medium\ Quality=videobitrate\=768000|peakvideobitrate\=768000|vbr\=0|width\=352|height\=240|audiobitrate\=128|outputstreamtype\=101|audiosampling\=48000|ipb\=2|deinterlace\=1|aspectratio\=0
mmc/python2_encoding/Fair=videobitrate\=1700000|vbr\=0|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=256|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/Good=videobitrate\=2800000|vbr\=0|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=256|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/Great=videobitrate\=3800000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=10|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG-4\ Extended\ Play=videobitrate\=700000|vbr\=0|width\=352|height\=240|audiobitrate\=128|outputstreamtype\=102|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG-4\ Good\ Quality=videobitrate\=3000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=102|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG-4\ High\ Quality=videobitrate\=4000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=102|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG-4\ Long\ Play=videobitrate\=1500000|vbr\=0|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=128|outputstreamtype\=102|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG-4\ Standard\ Play=videobitrate\=2000000|vbr\=0|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=226|outputstreamtype\=102|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/MPEG2\ Max\ Quality=videobitrate\=12000000|vbr\=0|width\=720|height\=480|audiobitrate\=384|outputstreamtype\=0|audiosampling\=48000
mmc/python2_encoding/SVCD\ Extra\ Long\ Play=videobitrate\=1152000|peakvideobitrate\=1440000|vbr\=1|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=12|audiosampling\=44100
mmc/python2_encoding/SVCD\ Long\ Play=videobitrate\=1600000|peakvideobitrate\=2000000|vbr\=1|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=12|audiosampling\=44100
mmc/python2_encoding/SVCD\ Standard\ Play=videobitrate\=2000000|peakvideobitrate\=2500000|vbr\=1|width\=480|height\=480|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=12|audiosampling\=44100
mmc/python2_encoding/VCD=videobitrate\=1150000|vbr\=0|width\=352|height\=240|audiobitrate\=224|outputstreamtype\=11|audiosampling\=44100

Originally Posted by antplugger

What do you use to convert to MPEG 4 ?

There are several discussions on this in the General forum. Since this is a change of subject, please continue that in the General forum. Edit: that portion of this thread has now been moved.

- Andy