BTV Won't Keep My Custom Settings

[offdahewk]

I have Beyond TV 4.4 and am pretty happy with it. Best PVR available in my opinion. However, I'm having trouble making it work with my preferred settings. I have a Diamond XtremeTV PVR550 which uses the Conexant Falcon II chipset. I'm trying to get the video bitrate above 8000kb, but BTV won't do it. I created a new Recording Profile in the Web Admin and set it as default, but no matter how high I set it, BTV automatically changes it to 8000kb in the registry. If I use the config tool that came with the card, I can alter the bitrate up to 12000kb and turn off the Temporal and Spatial filters. I also found the registry settings for those options and can change them through there. But no matter what I do, BTV automatically changes everything back to what it wants. I wouldn't have a problem with it except for the fact that the video looks crappy and pixelated at 8000kb and with those filters enabled. I'm trying to get as close to source quality as possible...is there any way to make BTV stop changing my card's settings?

P.S. I exported the data to a .reg file with my custom settings to see if that worked. Well it changes the quality to what I want, but as soon as live TV starts BTV changes it all back...

[soham]

Will lower settings work? I'm wondering if it's stuck on 800kb or if it's using 800kb as an outer limit.

[offdahewk]

Lower settings work, but nothing above 8000kb. The little config utility that came with the card (testfalcon.exe) allows me to change the settings without having to edit the registry but that doesn't help. I'm about to give up and put in my 8 year old AverTV Studio software encoder...at least it works. lol

[Tuck]

BTV does not store its configuration settings in the registry; whatever settings you're putting there are ignored. Beyond TV stores its settings in various XML files in:
\documents and settings\all users\application data\snapstream\beyond tv

User-created recording quality profiles are stored in UserProfiles.XML; you can open this in Internet Explorer for easy readability.

To get BTV to record at a custom quality setting automatically, you must first configure the quality profile in the Web Admin, then select that quality profile as the default.

[offdahewk]

Originally Posted by Tuck

BTV does not store its configuration settings in the registry; whatever settings you're putting there are ignored. Beyond TV stores its settings in various XML files in:
\documents and settings\all users\application data\snapstream\beyond tv

User-created recording quality profiles are stored in UserProfiles.XML; you can open this in Internet Explorer for easy readability.

To get BTV to record at a custom quality setting automatically, you must first configure the quality profile in the Web Admin, then select that quality profile as the default.

Yeah, I tried all that first. I know BTV doesn't store it's settings in the registry, but my card's settings ARE in the registry and whenever I start live tv or change channel in live tv mode, BTV automatically changes those settings to 8000kb, no matter what quality profile I create and select in Web Admin.

[Bigbird999]

off
Are you in the show more options mode for video quality? Are you hitting save changes at the bottom of the page before exiting web admin? When you go back to web admin and check the default video quality, does it show it to be at 12000 or is it set back to 8000?

BB

[offdahewk]

The profiles are set at whatever I put for quality, no problem there. It just for some reason will not actually "do anything" above 8000kb when in real use. Not only can I see it switch back to 8000kb in the registry, but I can also see it in real-time when I open the Nvidia PureVideo decoder app and watch the bitrate meter hover around 7-8. But when I use the config tool that came with the card and change the bitrate to 12000k, the meter in PureVideo maxes out at 12...like it should. Anyways, I just found out those reg settings are the same as the ones used in those Hauppauge tweak tools:

MPEGStreamType
BitRate <---thats what BTV keeps putting at 8000000, everytime...
BitRateMode
BitRatePeak
AudioDataRate
AudioCRC
AudioOutputMode
AudioSamplingRate
ClosedGOP
GOPNumberOfPictures
GOPNumberOfBFrames
InverseTelecine

So I'm about to try one out and see if I can get the settings to stick...
I also thought maybe it was the drivers, but few drivers seem to exist for this chipset. The latest one I could find was from 2004. Not many cards based on Falcon II chipset I suppose? The encoder chip is the same as the one on the PVR-150.

[Tuck]

Where are you getting the 8000 kbps rating? The program you're using may simply be reporting the bitrate incorrectly. To check this, do the math backwards.

1) Get the total size of the file, e.g. 3,630,397,466 bytes (from the file Properties).
2) Divide this by the total duration of the recording in minutes to find out bytes per minute; this example is of a 60 minute recording with 2 minutes padding = 64 total minutes: 56724960
3) Divide this by sixty to get bytes per second: 945416
4) Multiply this by eight to get bits per second: 7563328, or 7.56 megabits per second. This is consistent with my settings; variable bitrate, 7000 kbps base, 9000 kbps peak.

Note that this value is the total bitrate, of course; audio plus video.

Following that example, do you find that the finished recording is *actually* 8 megabits?



If so, let's check your settings to ensure that the setting is being kept; I can't find any reason why it wouldn't, but it's worth looking at. Look in userprofiles.xml; are your settings as you left them?



If so, I'd say most likely the card is simply refusing the settings BTV is passing to it. It's uncommon, but not rare, that this occurs. BTV isn't failing to keep the settings, or to request them from the card; the card simply doesn't like them and so reverts to some default (this is different for each card).

A driver update may solve the problem (be sure to delete, and re-create, the video inputs in the Setup Wizard after doing so, if you update the driver). I'd recommend trying this first.

If that doesn't solve the problem, then it's almost certainly the profile, but I can't tell you exactly which setting the card doesn't like. In many cases, settings are refused becuase the quality profile's "MPEG-2 Stream Type" is set to "DVD Stream." This tells the card to create a dvd-compliant recording; meaning, for example, it'll certainly refuse a resolution request of 640x480 (and sometimes refuse certain P frame settings). So to begin with, make sure your custom profile's "MPEG-2 Stream Type" is set to "Program Stream."

If THAT doesn't work, I'd suggest using one of the existing quality profiles as a template for your new profile instead of creating the profile from scratch. To do this, edit an existing profile in the Web Admin; change its friendly name, bump its bitrate up (in increments of 1000 kbps; let's just make sure we can get above 8000kbps for the time being), make sure it's set to Program Stream, save the changes and try again.


If that doesn't work -- ZIP up a few current BTV LOG files, along with your userprofiles.xml file, and attach them to a reply. It should tell us something.