How to play HD-PVR files on a notebook?

[timg11]

I have 1080i recordings from my HD-PVR that I would like to play on my notebook computer when traveling. The recordings play just fine on my 3GHz desktop, but on the 2GHz notebook, the video freezes for about 50% of each second.
I can play HD video recorded in MPEG format from OTA programs using the HD-Homerun tuner on the notebook, and they play smoothly.

I'm playing video with VLC 1.01. I tried to verify that VLC was using the same codecs on every machine, but I cannot figure out how to determine what codecs are being used to play a video. (Codec Information CTRL-J does not tell the actual codec)

Is there any simple way to transcode the H.264 TS files to MPEG2 files (or some other format that is less CPU intensive for playback)?

Or is there an alternative video player for H.264 that I should be using instead of VLC? Windows Media Player does not play the HD-PVR TS files.

[martin]

You might be able to get it to work if your video card supports H.264 decoding, and you use the correct decoder. See the sticky "What decoders are being used for h.264 videos?"

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40653

[timg11]

Thanks for the reply. I think the other thread is about what H.264 decoders work in SageTV. I suppose I could install SageTV on my notebook, but I'm happy to use VLC or some other small player for this purpose if I can get it to work.

I did find a thread on H.264 performance in VLC, but the changes recommended don't seem to help at all on my notebook.

My video is NVidia Quadro NVS 110M. That was the "upgraded" video option on the Dell D820 (compared to the default Intel GMA video). I can't tell if it has any hardware acceleration features.

[timg11]

I've been trying to get FFMPEG to convert the H.264 .TS files to MPEG2.
I found some other threads that recommend a command line such as this:

ffmpeg -threads 2 -y -i %1 -target ntsc-dvd -acodec ac3 -ab 384k -b 8192k -r 29.97 -s 1920x1080 -vcodec mpeg2video %1.mpg

This is a CMD file that passes the input file name as %1.

This runs and shows normal progress output in the command window. The MPG file is being written on the target disk. When it gets through a few thousand frames, the computer freezes momentarily then reboots. I have no idea why that happens. I checked in task manager, and FFMPEG is using about 34M of RAM, and the amount does not increase before the reboot happens.

Are there any other solutions for H.264 to MPEG2 conversion or transcoding?

I'm using the Windows version of FFMPEG that identifies itself as version SUN-r18639

[stanger89]

MPC-HC can use hardware decoding of video cards. Though I kind of doubt the Quadro NVS has H.264 decoding. CoRE AVC is supposed to be a fast decoder if your video doesn't do hardware decoding, that may help.

[timg11]

I installed the Arcsoft Totalmedia Theater software that came with the HD-PVR. It is a little better than VLC, but still unwatchable. Thanks for the tip on CoreAVC. I'll give that a try.

[Djc208]

The HD-PVR software includes a software converter to dump the HD PVR files to some other formats. I've used it to transfer some shows to my Archos and it works fine. Not the most convenient method but an option.

[stanger89]

The only other option is apparently there's an Broadcom expresscard video decoder you can buy. I'm not sure if the thread is on this forum or AVS.

[martin]

I found this page which appears to show the NVS 110M supports PureVideo HD:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_...ebook_fbs.html

I have an old Dell Precision M70 with the optional NVidia Quadro FX Go1400 video card which according to this document in the following link supports H.264 Decode Acceleration. I seem to recall after testing with PowerDVD9 it didn't work and I concluded it was too old. You may have to do some testing too since AFAIK there is nothing conclusive on NVidia's website.


http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/...Comparison.pdf

[stanger89]

If it does, then MPC-HC should work no problem.

[Swagger200]

Don't have one and can't vouch for it, but from my readings on the newly released Dell Studio 14z laptop with the Nvidia 9400m graphics card, this should be able to playback h.264 files such as those from the HD-PVR. I would customize to get the larger screen and 8-cell battery.

Apparently MacBooks also use this graphics card (for a lot more money). This is the only Windows laptop I know of with this capability.

I know that ATI 3650HD and 3850HD desktop video cards play back h.264 well, even on single core CPU's. So if these are available on a laptop, that should work as well.

[Djc208]

Any integrated or discreet graphics of the current or previous generation ATI or Nvidia graphics should have the hardware to do assisted h.264 decoding, but the software needs to support hardware decoding.

I think only the most recent Intel graphics have built-in hardware for this, and even then it's more CPU intensive than the other options above.

I was playing some HD-PVR files on my desktop (with the ATI 3870) yesterday via Sage Client and cpu use was 10 or 12% between both cores. The only codec I've installed is the one that comes with the HD PVR and the one in Sage.