What is SnipStream?

[armedmetallica]

Just curious what this feature is for.i

[gbranche]

Digital broadcasts are digital streams of data containing the primary channel, and one or more subchannels, all contained within the same stream. When recording a digital channel, BTV simply records the entire data stream direct to your drive, with the necessary info to allow it to play back the actual channel of interest. The other subchannels are simply ignored during playback.

StreamSnip post-processes the data file, and discards the data from the extra subchannels that were of no interest during the data capture. The channel that was selcted for the "recording" is written to the StreamSnipped file. By removing the unwanted data, the file size will shrink, thereby leaving more space on your hard drive for additional data capture.

[armedmetallica]

Thanks! That helps a bit -- thought it leads to a follow up:

What does a normal 1 hour show at Fair quality normally "cost"?

Thanks!

[gbranche]

Originally Posted by armedmetallica

What does a normal 1 hour show at Fair quality normally "cost"?

With the digital streams, there is no concept of varying qualities. It's either good, or it's not. (Hence, the "digital" in the description.")

When capturing a standard digital broadcast stream, it usually takes about 8.5 Gb of disk space to record an hour's worth of the broadcast.

[jebbbz]

For me, after StreamSnip, an hour of high-def may be 5.5 to 7.5 gigs in size, sometimes even larger. A standard def digital program may be only a couple of gigs after StreamSnipping. It depends on how much of the transport stream the broadcaster dedicates to the primary channel. Some high-def that includes a lot of action may take almost all the transport stream capacity while some low action shows take a lot less.