Hauppauge HVP-1600 Preferred Recording Format Questions

[joncurtiss]

I’ve been using Beyond-TV for a couple years now, all analog.

A few days ago I removed the analog card and installed a Hauppauge HVR-1600 card, and configured it to record only over-the-air HD (I don’t really need analog any more). I did a fresh-install of Beyond-TV to do my best to clear out any settings from the old card.

So here’s the problem - I can only seem to record in a format that has the extension “.tp” (and files are ~9GBytes per hour). When I try to play those back with Beyond-TV it stutters a lot (esp. when the images are complicated). The files seem to be recorded ok, because I can play them back with the vlc player - the images are not nearly as stuttery but a little fuzzed-up. My PC is 2.4GHz with very good video, but it’s still choppy.

What I’d like to do is to record the shows initially as mpeg’s. It looks like I might be able to do this, since if I use the utility for recording that came with the card, Win-TV, the output files are .mpeg and the playback is as smooth as glass. I can’t tell if Win-TV is doing that in software or if it’s somehow getting the card to do it.

I can’t change the "Preferred Recording Format" in Advanced Preferences (the option is grayed-out).

I’d look into using ShowSqueeze to reformat the recorded shows but that doesn’t fix the stuttery Live-TV viewing, and ShowSqueeze seems to fail for such large files anyway.

So, - my questions three...

1. Is there a way to configure Beyond-TV to tell my HVR-1600 card to record as mpeg rather than “.tp” format?

2. Have I configured something wrong when setting up Beyond-TV to work with this card?

3. Has anyone using this card been able to record into .mpg/.mpeg?

Any other suggestions are very, very appreciated.

[groucho111]

For recording the OTA digital .tp is the only format you can record in. The .mpg hardware decoding only works for analog recording.

you didn't list your system specs in your post but if you are getting jittery video with live TV it sounds like it might be time for a motherboard and processor upgrade.

[tscales]

Before you do anything, backup everything and create a recording partition with 64K clusters (this is destructive!). That makes an incredible difference.

[joncurtiss]

My system is a Dell 4550 at 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM. The hard-drives are PATA (i.e. not serial ATA) so that could be a weak-point (as pointed out).

I'll try reformatting the disk I use for video storage (500GB) to 64KB clusters to see if that helps enough. I don't have much else on it so that size cluster shouldn't be a detriment to space, much.

The thing that bothers me (some) is that the WinTV software generates mpeg files when it records, and those seem to be ok. I'm thinking that maybe they get generated in software before the data is spooled to the disk, reducing the load on the storage subsystems. That's another reason for trying to speed-up the disk retrieval speed (with 64KB clusters).

I'll post my results. either way.

Thanks for the help so far. If anyone else has ideas feel free to throw them into the mix.

[tscales]

I haven't used the HVR-1600, but I have used an almost identical 4550 with THREE Dvico tuners recording HD concurrently without problem.

One question: When you added the 500GB drive, did you remember to go into the BIOS and change the drive from OFF to AUTO? A quirk of the Dells, particularly the 4550, is that the drive will work when it is set to OFF, but it runs in really slow PIO mode, Not UDMA5 mode.

If you go into device manager for the IDE controller and look at the advanced tab, the only thing in PIO should be your CD/DVD drive(s).

Just a thought.

[joncurtiss]

The drive is configured ok - the hardware manager says it's configured for Ultra DMA Mode 5.

I'm configuring the 500GB drive for 64KB 'allocation unit size' now (and for the next ~1.5 hours), and I'll re-test when I have a moment (may not be until tomorrow night).

As a simple point of reference, I did a test before the reformatting, by copying a ~4.7GB file from/to the disk I'm working on (i.e. making a copy on the same disk) and it took 4:32 (minutes:seconds). We'll see how fast it is after the reformat.

Thanks again for your help.

[not_Shorty]

My guess is your CPU's the limiting factor.

[tscales]

By the way, a quick reformat would have been fine -- about 90 seconds. By now it is done though!

Let us know.

[joncurtiss]

Well it seems to be working after the reformat. Making a copy of the ~4.7GB file from/to the disk I reformatted (i.e. making a copy on the same disk) took 4:32 (minutes:seconds) before the reformat and now takes 2:58. It's a completely empty disk now too, so that could make a difference.

Nonetheless live tv and recording seems to be working ok on most channels, but not all. It's very possible that the couple of channels that are stuttery are not receiving well, so the glitches I'm seeing are due to the poor reception (remember this is OTA). I'm hoping that it isn't just a higher bit-rate on those channels. I'm going to pick-up a simple amplifier to see how it improves the reception. I saw somewhere on these forums a signal meter I can install to quantify the difference. If not, I think there's one I can get for Win-TV.

On the CPU-bound front, I agree that I'm definitely pushing the limits. During recording the CPU is ~25%. When I'm viewing (live, or pre-recorded) it shows 100% CPU but the system seems pretty responsive. I'm running a single-core 2.4GHz Intel CPU.

One other thing that's not directly related, but a point of reference for someone looking at the archives here - I recorded 139 minutes of Air Force One last night and I was able to ShowSqueeze it overnight but it took 6 hours and 20 minutes. The file size before compression was 19,291MB. After, it was 3,122MB. I compressed it at the 'Better' target quality (1.31GB/hour) into .avi format.

I'll repost some results if the stutters I still have on the couple of channels with problems if it turns out to be anything other than reception problems, or if anyone has any other comments/questions. Thanks all.

[myktek]

what video card do you have in the system?

[joncurtiss]

The video card is an ATI Radeon X800 Pro AGP 256MB. It's faster than most AGP cards (wider busses, etc. than many higher 'numbered' Radeon cards because of the "Pro" specification). I don't think that's my weak point (but could be wrong). It's set for AGP 4x (I think that's the highest speed on this system).

[not_Shorty]

Given that you're showing 100% CPU usage while playing back HDTV content I would say that your CPU is indeed holding you back. Even though the machine is still responsive, the fact that it's maxing out the CPU isn't a good thing. It's doing all the work it possibly can, and you're experiencing playback issues. I'd say this is a confirmation that you need a faster CPU to meet your needs. Unless your CPU usage is less than max, it's doing as much as it possibly can, and any issues won't be remedied until you do get a CPU fast enough to do the decoding work at hand and still have some breathing room left over. If it never hits 100% during playback, it's fast enough. If it hits 100% during playback, any issues you see are probably due to the CPU being too slow.

[eMpTy3000]

Is there a video card that will do all the HDTV playback and take the burden off the cpu? I was thinking about building another BTV machine for my father in law with a 2.4GHz processor and make up for the slow CPU with a good video card. Will that work? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[dgw80]

Have you checked whether Hardware Acceleration is enabled for your video card driver/MPEG decoder?

I have a similar PC (Dell 4500, 2.4GHz P4, 512MB) running an MSI 6200 128MB video card (i.e., not a real high performance card). I use it as a BTV Link box and get smooth HD video. My CPU usage is nowhere near 100% (less than 50% IIRC).

Not exactly apples-to-apples, but another data point.

Dennis

[eMpTy3000]

Originally Posted by dgw80

Have you checked whether Hardware Acceleration is enabled for your video card driver/MPEG decoder?

I have a similar PC (Dell 4500, 2.4GHz P4, 512MB) running an MSI 6200 128MB video card (i.e., not a real high performance card). I use it as a BTV Link box and get smooth HD video. My CPU usage is nowhere near 100% (less than 50% IIRC).

Not exactly apples-to-apples, but another data point.

Dennis

Well that is good news for me! You get smooth HD video, huh? I'll look into that video card!