handling bad ATSC recordings

[drewg]

Hi,

I'm a current mythtv user who is nearly ready to switch as soon as I can order an HD media extender. I'll be re-using my existing linux mythtv box with 3 ATSC tuner cards.

Not all my stations are in the same direction, and I currently have my worst tuner pointed at PBS. The recordings from it tend to be "bad" or "glitchy" about 25% of the time. This is generally OK, because PBS will show the same program a number of times, so I've got good odds of getting a good recording eventually.

Under mythtv, if I watch the first few seconds of the show, I can tell how glitchy it will be by looking at the runtime progress bar. Eg, if it is a 60 minute long Sesame Street, and the progress bar says I'm at the beginning of a 57 minute, 20 second long show, I know that 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the show are "missing". Eg, there are 2:40 worth of unrecoverable errors in the MPEG-2 file captured by my ATSC tuner. At this point, I can delete it and tell it to re-record the next airing. If there are less then 10 seconds missing due to glitches, I'll generally keep the show. This is really handy, since I don't need to watch the entire show to see how glitchy it is. The whole process takes 10 seconds or so.

The question I have is how does Sage handle "bad" ATSC recordings like these? Is there any easy way for me to tell if the recording is good (and how good it is), or do I need to watch the show until I see glitches?

Thanks,

Drew

[camus]

In my experience you to watch the show, which stinks when you get about 35 minutes into a show and start getting bad reception. I recently moved and haven't quite figured out how I want to permanently set the antenna so I have had some bad recordings.

One thing I do look at is the to see if commercials are marked for a show that should have them, if they aren't or if there are in an odd pattern the recording is probably not so good.

[matt91]

I have no experience in this area, but if you're willing, seems like you should try the 21-day free trial and see what happens. If you get some bad recordings, and Sage chokes on them, you have an answer for free.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by matt91

I have no experience in this area, but if you're willing, seems like you should try the 21-day free trial and see what happens. If you get some bad recordings, and Sage chokes on them, you have an answer for free.

There's no free trial for linux.

Drew

[drewg]

Originally Posted by camus

In my experience you to watch the show, which stinks when you get about 35 minutes into a show

Darn it!

This is going to be a showstopper for me. The TAF (Toddler Acceptance Factor) will be very low if I can't easily weed out and re-record badly recorded kids shows. PBS with its stupid tower location has caused me such headaches...

Thanks for the bad news. You just saved me $280.

Drew

[stanger89]

If you miss part of a recording (this is in general) Sage will display red on the progress bar where the missing segments are. I've never had a digital recording so bad that I've seen that happen so I don't know if it will do that if you just have a crappy signal.

[GKusnick]

Define what you mean by "badly recorded". If you mean incomplete or discontinuous recordings, then as Stanger said, the missing portions will show as red in the timeline.

If you're talking about short bursts of pixelation or other artifacts in an otherwise complete and continuous recording, then as far as I know the only way to detect those is to watch the program. I'm not sure what you would expect Sage to tell you in this case anyway.

Either way, once you've identified a bad recording, there's a command to "delete because it's the wrong recording", and Sage will record it again next time it airs.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Define what you mean by "badly recorded". If you mean incomplete or discontinuous recordings, then as Stanger said, the missing portions will show as red in the timeline.

If you're talking about short bursts of pixelation or other artifacts in an otherwise complete and continuous recording, then as far as I know the only way to detect those is to watch the program. I'm not sure what you would expect Sage to tell you in this case anyway.

Either way, once you've identified a bad recording, there's a command to "delete because it's the wrong recording", and Sage will record it again next time it airs.

I tried to be clear.. by "badly recorded" I mean is there enough pixelization in part of a program so as to make it unwatchable? As I said before, I can tell in mythtv by looking at the runtime progress bar and noticing that the show length is quite a bit shorter than the timeslot (58:00 rather than 60:00, for example).

If Sage will show red spots in the timeline in this case, then that would be great. From what camus said, this does not sound like the case..

Drew

[drewg]

Originally Posted by camus

In my experience you to watch the show, which stinks .

Do you happen to notice any red marks like Stanger89 or GKusnick mention?

Drew

[camus]

Yes, if it is a real crappy signal and you lose the stream you will see gaps in the recording timeline. If it is just pixelation etc it won't show up in the timeline, with the exception of the absence of com detection as I mentioned above.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by camus

Yes, if it is a real crappy signal and you lose the stream you will see gaps in the recording timeline. If it is just pixelation etc it won't show up in the timeline, with the exception of the absence of com detection as I mentioned above.

Cool. That actually may be enough for me to tell. It would be nice to be able to try it to be sure. I really, really wish there was a Linux trial version.

Thanks,

Drew