HDPVR SD recording quality

[Rico66]

How can I set the recording quality for HDPVR SD recordings? Sage does not use the value that's defined for the HDPVR, when recording SD.
The reason why I'm specifically asking about this is, because my SD recordings used to be around 4Mbps (vbr), which was fine. But recently this dropped to less than 2Mbps, which is not so good anymore. I played around with some of the quality recording settings for HD, and those all work as expected. But SD somehow uses a different setting (which I can't find).
Note that I specifically sety my STB to 480p for SD output.

[Rico66]

Does nobody have any information how Sage calculates the quality settings for SD recordings with the HD PVR, and whether this can be adjusted by the user?

[Opus4]

If SageTV detects an SD resolution for an HD-PVR recording, it automatically adjusts the recording rate to a lower value. It does this via this DWORD registry value:

Software\\Frey Technologies\\Common\\DirectShow\\SDCapRateDiv10

The default value is 25. (When used, it is divided by ten, so the default divisor is really 2.5.) The recording rate is then divided by that value.

Example: If you wanted to try dividing the recording rate by 1.5, then set the registry value to 15.


I tried this in the past, but it seemed like it didn't always affect the recording rate. When my STB was outputting at variable resolutions instead of a fixed resolution, I saw an HD recording start at SD resolution because the ad before the HD movie was in SD. The resulting recording was still at HD recording rate, though, so all I can guess is that the HD-PVR saw the HD res & recorded at a higher rate automatically. Another time, I had set the reg value to 10 so there was no rate adjustment, but the HD-PVR seemed to reduce it to some other value on its own. So, I don't think you can guarantee he use of this setting.

Also, The HD-PVR seemed to record SD just as well using the 25 reg value (divide rate by 2.5) as 10 (divide by 1; keep the HD rate), so you may not see any improvement in SD recordings done at a higher recording rate.

- Andy

[Rico66]

Great, that's exactly what I was looking for!

Setting this now to a little bit lower value and experimenting. As you mentioned it definetly depends on the source quality, 25 might be OK in many cases, but a little bit higher bit rate doesn't harm either.

Thanks