pVR-250 vs. Software Encoding

[jnaranjo]

I just purchased a PVR-250 and have been using WinDVR with a Nvidia Personal Cinema card and the WinDVR image is still better IMO. I notice alot of motion artifacts and yes I have downloaded the latest Hauppauge drivers and not really happy with what I am seeing. Shouldn't the PVR-250 with hardware encoding have a better picture than using software encoding even if it's with another application? I spent the ~ $100 on the card thinking it would at least match the software encoding that my Nvidia card is doing but nope, not really. I haven't tried any of the modifications that are in the forums, I just thought that with so many recommendations for the PVR-250 that the standard BTV settings would already be set for the best possible picture. I hope I haven't missed anything in the forums but has anyone else noticed this kind of issue?

[TomZ]

This is a thread that I started on the topic.
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=10370

There are many others such as
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=11287

My current settings are:

frames per sec 29.970
size 720x480
bit rate 10,000,000
bidirectional frames 2
predictive frames 4
noise filter off
motion precision 25%
variable bitrate off

[cmasters]

Don't confuse uncompressed LiveTV image quality from those other applications with recording quality from BTV. Make sure you are comparing recording to recording. Once you get there, these forums will help you tune the 250 properly.

[jnaranjo]

Thanks for the information. I will look at modifying these settings tonight and I'm hoping it will look better. I was somewhat bummed after looking at the video I was getting last night.

cmaster: I don't really recall right now but I will check.

[TomZ]

By the way, I have the noise filter off because I have a digitally based program source. If you are recording off of an analog source, you may want to turn it on.

[_Shorty]

the motion precision setting doesn't work at present with a pvr250, 1 looks the same as 100

[jnaranjo]

OK so I've mucked with the settings and YES they make a huge difference. The quality is sooooooo much better BUT the size of my files are now HUGE. I need to scale back a bit but I am really much more happy with the quality. I'm having some different issues now but I'll post a new thread for those. Thanks!