HD Recordings in Proprietary Format?

[jkohn]

I'm evaluating SageTV and Client applications with a Cat's Eye VBOX 150 ATSC tuner. The Tuner and Sage TV are in a dedicated HD Recording workstation (that also has an old HiDTV Janus-based HD card). My HTPC then uses the SageTV Client. The client/server setup is pretty slick.

One issue I've noticed though is that HD recordings don't seem to be standard transport stream files like I expected. For one thing a 1-hour recording came in at about 5GB instead of over 8GB, which I guess could be due to stripping out unnecessary sub-channels? But more importantly the resulting MPG can't be played by any other application besides SageTV. I tried TheaterTek 2.4, WMP, and PowerDVD among others.

Is this some limitation of the demo, or is that just the way it is? I had expected that since there's no "encoding" taking place for ATSC channels that it would just save the transport stream to disk since that's how my old tuner/software worked and it was my understanding that most current applications work this way.

[lovingHDTV]

Depending on how you have Sage setup it could be a TS or a PS file. Unfortionately, I don't remember the property that sets this.

[stanger89]

By default Sage records to a standard MPEG-2 PS file with all other substreams removed.

[lovingHDTV]

It might be as easy as setting the following in your sage.properties files to false:

mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by stanger89

By default Sage records to a standard MPEG-2 PS file with all other substreams removed.

So should I be able to play these files in other applications? Any idea why I can't?

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

It might be as easy as setting the following in your sage.properties files to false:

mmc/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true

Thanks, I'll give that a try (although the PS is more attractive since it saves disc space, assuming I can get past this issue).

Thanks,

Jeff

[lovingHDTV]

Yes, I play mine in WMP and winamp.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jkohn

So should I be able to play these files in other applications? Any idea why I can't?

Probably a filter config issue, not all demux's like HD PS files.

Thanks, I'll give that a try (although the PS is more attractive since it saves disc space, assuming I can get past this issue).

I think even with it set to TS (ie the property set to false) Sage still only saves the desired subchannel.

[Goodspike]

Sage used to record in TS or TP format, as I recall. My MyHD card has never been able to play Sage files.

[jkohn]

Probably a filter config issue, not all demux's like HD PS files.

Both TheaterTek and Sage Client are using the NVidia codecs, I would expect very similar behavior between the two.

In addition to TheaterTek on my HTPC, I also tried playing the PS MPG's on my desktop workstation in WMP (went through the motions, but no sound or video), PowerDVD (same), and WinDVD (played about 2 seconds and then crashed).

I then tried configuring SageTV to record TS format instead of PS. Now the TS files are playable on my workstation by PowerDVD and WMP, but TheaterTek 2.4 still can't play them on the HTPC. TheaterTek has no problem with TS files from my HiDTV, so I don't see what could be different except the files themselves. BTW if it matters I tried selecting both Microsoft and NVida for the Demux option in TheaterTek, didn't seem to make a difference. (Though I didn't think to try both options with the PS MPG before deleting it).

[jkohn]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I think even with it set to TS (ie the property set to false) Sage still only saves the desired subchannel.

I missed this part of your reply at first, but I just checked and you're right the TS file is still only 5.4GB. I wonder if this is what is causing TheaterTek problems? Maybe the metadata in the TS still lists all the subchannels and this is throwing TT off?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jkohn

Both TheaterTek and Sage Client are using the NVidia codecs, I would expect very similar behavior between the two.

That's only part of it, the other is the demux/splitter.

BTW if it matters I tried selecting both Microsoft and NVida for the Demux option in TheaterTek, didn't seem to make a difference. (Though I didn't think to try both options with the PS MPG before deleting it).

SageTV has it's own demux.