SageTV mis-rates SVCD?

[jal]

On the "Set Quality" menu in detailed Setup, SVCD is rated at .7GB per hour. I assumed this to mean that a one hour recording should create a file size of .7 GB.

For instance today I tried VCD and got .3GB filesize for 30 minutes, as expected, because SageTV rates it at .6GB per hour. Fine.

However, when I tried SVCD (Extra Long Play), the filesize was 1.28 GB for a 30 minute show (instead of the expected .35 GB). That's about four times the expected filesize. What gives?

I'm trying to save hard drive space. I gave up on VCD because it won't playback even after the recording is long finished (in SageTV 6.x). Now I'm trying to use SVCD and getting four times the expected filesize?

Any suggestions, anyone?

By the way - the two tests (both the VCD and the SVCD) - were on the same show, same channel (but 2 different episodes of course).

[tmiranda]

jal,

This doesn't answer your question but if you are looking to save space H.264 (listed as Apple TV in Sage) is a much more efficient codec. I'm not sure what you are using for playback, but if it can handle H.264 decoding you will see much better results vs. VCD or SVCD at the same bitrates.

Tom

[jal]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

jal,

This doesn't answer your question but if you are looking to save space H.264 (listed as Apple TV in Sage) is a much more efficient codec. I'm not sure what you are using for playback, but if it can handle H.264 decoding you will see much better results vs. VCD or SVCD at the same bitrates.

Tom

Thanks for the info. I'll look into that. I just enabled AutoCompress on Favorites. On the first try, it converted a 385 MB VCD file to the same size in "Good Quality MPEG4". The new MPEG4 file is playable in Sage, unlike the VCD file.

However, I'll experiment with the H.264 (I'm not familiar witht his codec) per your advice.

Thanks !!

[jal]

I came across some additional solutions discussed on this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44155