does record quality essentially equal live tv playback quality?

[j0j081]

In Beyond TV or any pvr app for that matter when you set the record quality for example MPEG2 fair, good, or best is that the quality live tv playback will be in? I am new to this but I understand live tv is recorded to your hd first and then played back for your viewing pleasure. Correct or no? Thanks.

[KenH]

I believe that is correct, at least for BTV. I have tried different record settings to help me find a balance between Live TV quality and record for DVD quality, and the different settings do affect Live TV quality.

[stevewh]

In Beyond TV, when you set the default video quality, that quality will be used for live TV and also for recordings. However, for each scheduled recording, you can override that default by specifying which quality to use. You can do this in Web Admin, and also in the Viewscape. In the Viewscape, you get there from the Set Recording Priorities list.

[j0j081]

okay then, so if i want the best possible live tv quality what mpeg2 bitrate should i use? in the web admin i see you can set the bitrate to a custom level. would 12,000 kbps be good? the "best" setting is only 7,500 i think.

[stevewh]

Here's a link to the settings I'm using, plus some other info that might be useful: Tweaking video quality settings can make a big difference

That post contains a link to a useful reference site. While browsing it, I got the impression that for MPEG2 there is a maximum useful bitrate, and anything beyond that is overkill, but I'm not sure now that that impression was correct. I would think that 12,000 kbps would be excellent, but if you do any recording at that quality, it will create very large files.

I used 12,000 as only a peak value so that it could use it if it needed it. My hope was that it would use less whenever it could.

[j0j081]

I just tried your PCTV Best setting and although it does save quite a bit of disk space live tv quality is much much worse. All the details were lost. It might be okay for recording a lot if you are low on real estate but I prefer the default best setting personally. Nice work though anyway.

[stevewh]

Thanks for the report. I tried some higher settings, but they ate up disk space way too fast.

[merrypig]

Bear in mind that the DVD player specification only calls for dvd players to support up to 9.6Mbps bitrates - including the audio.

SO you might find that if you burn your 12Mbps file to disk that it won't play everywhere.

I personally set mine to 6-9Mbps vbr and I can't discern it from a regular dvd even on a 100" screen.

[jocal]

I noticed you said you recorded using VBR. Did you have any problems editing these files and then burning to disk? I know that sometimes there are audio/video sync issues with VBR recordings. Also, what kind of file sizes are you getting? Thanks

-Jocal

[merrypig]

Absolutely No Problems. TM.

I use TMPGENC DVD Author to do all my editing. Including recoding audio to AC-3 (2 channel ).

My recordings are indeed done with a PVR250 so the audio sync really never should be a problem in the mpeg files.

My file sizes are about 2GB/hour at my top quality setting (the one posted above). At this rate I can usually squeeze a 2 1/2 hour movie without commericals onto a regular DVD+R 4.3GB dvd. If the movie is longer then I run the output of DVDAuthor through dvdshrink to reduce it down intelligently to fit a 4.3GB disk.

I prefer to record higher and shrink whenI need it, than to set a bitrate lower and get worse quality on short programs that I could really handle anyway.