How To: Record 1080i HD Component from Any Source

[Eckwell]

Are captions still embedded in the H.264 container?

[dcardellini]

Originally Posted by AVeNVy

No need to go on our subjective impressions - I just added a video quality comparison section to the guide with a short (~25 secs) clip for download and comparison.

Hate to be a lazy bum, but I will not have access to my TV for a week. Dying to get some subjective feedback on the quality loss with the A/D- recompress dance.

I have already learned that we must make compromises to get the flexibility we desire.....just want to know how much of a hit here.

Thx for a great guide post!

[AVeNVy]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Hate to be a lazy bum, but I will not have access to my TV for a week. Dying to get some subjective feedback on the quality loss with the A/D- recompress dance.

I have already learned that we must make compromises to get the flexibility we desire.....just want to know how much of a hit here.

Thx for a great guide post!

Sorry I've been a bit quiet lately - been busy working, traveling, moving and vacationing... Fortunately I've had some time in between to continue looking in to video quality and here's what I can say so far -

Let me start by saying that if you do not do an A/B comparison it's highly unlikely most people would have any idea the content had been re-encoded. The quality is very high. Having said that...

The quality (or loss of) varies depending on the encoder. When doing an A/B comparison against the source using the ATI encoder and 1080i input the encoded stream looks a bit soft and washed out. I asked a few folks who had no idea what they were looking at to tell me which looked bettter and most pointed out the source as looking better pretty quickly. However, they all thought both looked very good. The quality improves noticeably when encoding with the Sage Pro encoder at 720P. The colors do not look washed out but the video does still look a little soft when compared to the source. In this case, most of the folks I asked had a much harder time determining the difference between the source and re-encoded content Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, the Sage encoder takes much more horsepower than the ATI encoder and I've yet to get the Sage encoder working as stable as the ATI encoder.

I should have the time to update the guide over the next week or two now that things have slowed down for me a bit...

I've also got access to a Gefen DVR which records via HDMI and uses (from what I can tell) the same Amabrella chip that the new Hauppauge USB component capture device will use so I'm going to try to add that to my quality comparisons as well. Not sure how useful it's going to be as there are a lot of components in the video chain beyond the encoder AND the Gefen deivce records via HDMI so there's no analog conversion with this device, but I'm curious to compare the quality anyway. I also pre-ordered one of the Hauppauge devices but it looks like it will be a while before I can give any impressions.

[Olias]

Thanks for the update, AVeNVy. I haven't been able to do much experimentation lately, the family is too busy enjoying the setup.

The last thing I did was put SageTV on a ABit mobo w/ a Q6700 and capture the audio via the mobo's built in SPDIF. Took awhile to get the proper audio delay for it to sync up. When I get the opportunity, I'd like to play around with the Pro encoder.

[Olias]

AVeNVy, I keep having sync issues with digital audio captured via SPDIF. Are you capturing audio via the Pro or digitally? I'm using a graph with the AC3 filter but still haven't found a setting that will reliably capture perfectly synced digital audio.

Still waiting for the Hauppauge device to come in to set up with my second satbox...

[AVeNVy]

Hey Olias, I'm capturing digitally using an M-Audio Transit. Unfortunately I got digital audio capture working shortly before I moved and haven't had the chance to get my box set back up since I've moved (it's been over a month, painful...) and so honestly I haven't done enough recording to know if I have sync issues. A few things I'd recommend checking though -

* Make sure you're using a 29.97 (and NOT 30) frame rate in your Blackmagic filter

* Try with and without the "Use Clock" option checked in Graphedit under the Graph pulldown menu (make sure you save the graph after changing).

* Maybe try a different muxer. I'm not sure what you're using now but I had good luck with the SageTV Mpeg Muxer after switching to the SageTV MPEG Encoder. It's been so long though I can't remember if it connects to the ATI encoder... I do remember that with the SageTV Muxer I was able to connect the M-Audio capture filter directly to the muxer without any filters in the middle (as was required when using the ATI muxer) so that might help. What does the audio capture side of your graph look like?

* Finally, the sync issues might be a result of dropped frames so you might try backing off on the ATI encoding settings. Make sure you've got the "No Preprocessing" box checked and you might want to try lowering the quality a notch or two. In fact, you might try cranking the quality and bitrate way down just to see if it is in fact a performance issue.

Can't think of much beyond that right now but hopefully I'll have my box set back up shortly and will let you know how A/V sync w/digital audio is going.

I'm also anxiously awaiting my Hauppauge. Will be very interesting to see how the video quality compares...

[Olias]

Thanks for the response. I'll try out your suggestions this weekend when the family's not watching TV (probably Saturday around midnight!) and post my results.

Maybe I'll get lucky and have the Hauppauge card by then too. I hear they started shipping some of them.

[jfploeg]

Hi AVeNVy,

Thanks for your great post on how to set up the Intensity Pro card for capturing HD. I have being playing with a USB cam to test the setup and I have everything working (thought I do this before investing on the Intensity Pro card). With my current setup (Aver Media capture card) I have the USB-UIRT with a DirecTV H20 STB tuning my HD channels. How do I get this tuner setup working with the Intensity Pro? I will be feeding the component output from the DirecTV STB to the IP card.

-jfp

[Jackal]

I just want to know if the card is low profile or not.

[Clift]

Originally Posted by Jackal

I just want to know if the card is low profile or not.

No it is not.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

[Jackal]

I was going to put this in my HTPC for capturing PlayStation 3 footage but the case uses low profile cards. So this won't fit. But I really wanted to try it so I would just have to use it in a different build.

Thanks.