Creative VideoBlaster DVCR

[dkardatzke]

The graphic you see is a Watermark from Elecard for the shareware version of their MPEG-2 Decoder. You can purchase a licensed version on their website of the MPEG-2 Player which comes with the MPEG-2 Decoder for $20.00.

[ruel]

FYI, I found that one way to get around the sound sync problem after changing the channels a lot in SageTV is to hit pause and/or to skip back (rewind) and/or skip forward, and then hit play.

After playing with SageTV a little more extensively (I let SageTV go and do a lot of timeshift recording overnight), I'll have to try that seeker/fast_mux_switch=false setting again for SageTV to see if it still crashes/freezes my Creative VB DVCR card.

[JQuaglino]

I've had no luck getting DVD complaint files. All files, no matter what setting I select, are reported as 640*480. Even if I select SVCD, I get 640*480, 48 khz.

Is there something I'm not doing correctly?

[ruel]

Originally posted by JQuaglino
I've had no luck getting DVD complaint files. All files, no matter what setting I select, are reported as 640*480. Even if I select SVCD, I get 640*480, 48 khz.

Correct me if this is inapplicable, since I don't know if there are the same settings in the SageRecorder.properties settings file, but take a look at this message thread (look at the fourth message) regarding the Sage.properties file for SageTV:
http://www.freytechnologies.com/foru...s=&threadid=89
I haven't gotten that far yet in making playable discs from Sage video recordings since I'm still exploring SageTV as a PVR.

[Narflex]

The creative drivers don't support another larger than 640x480 currently. Apparently there's a bug with 480x480 for the Creative card in Sage. That'll be fixed in the next release.

To get around it now for V1.1.4 (yeah, this sounds weird, but it works) make a custom quality setting (directions on our website) and set vbr to 480. It was using 'vbr' for both 'vbr' and 'width'. For example, to do SVCD Standard Play, add this line to the SageRecorder.properties file:
mmc/python2_encoding/SVCD480x480=videobitrate=2000000|peakvideobitrate=2500000|vbr=480|width=480|height=480|audiobitrate=224|outputstreamtype=0|audiosampling=48000

Thanks,

[JQuaglino]

Jeffrey,

Isn't SVCD audio supposed to be 44.1 and no 48 khz?

[Narflex]

I'm not sure. But the Creative driver doesn't support 44.1 kHz. Only 32 & 48, so that's not even an option.

[cellarboy]

I must say that Sage Recorder works suprising great considering the effort Creative went to try and prevent anyone else from making use of the card.

For some reason, the image quality is way better than the recordings made with the DVCR application. Are you supporting higher bitrates? Also, the horizonal jerkiness and blurry motion seem a lot less noticeable.

Are the video files recorded with the DCVR in this software completely MPEG2 compliant? They certainly seem to be, so Recorder doesn't seem to be introducing the errors into the data that the Creative app does.

Two things I noticed though. The Sage Recorder is prone to crashing -- a lot! Unfortunately, it was late when I was testing the software and I didn't write down the error codes. I shall do this the next time I play with the software.

The other is that while using the MPEG2 max quality option, I see a lot of video corruption in both the preview and recordings. multicolored blocks of garbage are all over the bottom half of the video. These seem to totally go away when you drop down to Best quality. I'm wondering if the MPEG2 max quality option is just too high of a bitrate for the card to handle?

[JQuaglino]

I just used sagerecorder coupled with Demo's hacked DVCR driver to produce a 720*480, 48 Khz mpeg. Opened it in Ulead Moviefactory. Authored a DVD and burned. It played fine in my Apex 1200. It was only a 10 second clip. I'm doing some more testing right now.

[Narflex]

Awesome about that DVD burning working.

cellarboy,

Sage supports whatever bitrates the hardware support. I don't place any limits on it, so you can specify anything...if it's too high, you'll just end up getting errors in the stream most likely.

Sage's files are fully MPEG2 compliant. Since the Creative card produces a compliant MPEG2 video stream, the errors they introduce is done in multiplexing. Sage uses its own custom multiplexor which creates compliant files (go to mpegla.com we're a listed licensee).

Please send me any information you have about the crashing, the application itself is completely stable in testing, but certain systems end up crashing due to hardware/driver conflicts. I recommend trying the Elecard MPEG2 decoders (there's a free demo on their website you can use www.elecard.com). They're pure software decoding and work with the widest variety of configurations (haven't found one they don't work with yet).

[ruel]

Originally posted by JQuaglino
I just used sagerecorder coupled with Demo's hacked DVCR driver to produce a 720*480, 48 Khz mpeg. Opened it in Ulead Moviefactory. Authored a DVD and burned. It played fine in my Apex 1200. It was only a 10 second clip. I'm doing some more testing right now.

Are you using Demo's driver only with the Sage software? How is it working for you with the regular default software for the Creative VB DVCR card (if you are still using the regular default software)? Or is Demo's driver not meant to be used with the regular default software for the Creative VB DVCR card? I tried installing Demo's drivers but got a crappy badly pixelated picture in the default software. Everything looked okay in SageTV but I haven't tried different recording settings yet. For now, I went back to the original drivers for the Creative VB DVCR card. FYI, I switching back and forth using the regular default software for the Creative VB DVCR card and using SageTV since I want to continue using both software.

[cellarboy]

I had a little more of a play and this is the error code I keep getting:

AppName: sagerecorder.exe
AppVer: 1.0.0.1 ModName: mpegmux.ax
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00001a68

It eventually happens on all the recording settings, but the higher the quality, the faster it occurs.

Hope this helps!

[Narflex]

cellarboy,

email support@freytechnologies.com, and I'll send you back a debug file which will allow me to get more details on that.

[_Demo_]

The modified vbdvcr driver only supports 720x480 and that is not supported by the default vbdvcr application... The drivers by default only support 640,480 and 320 but the actual hardware can do 720,640,544,480,352,320. For sound, the card is only able to capture at 32khz but the driver can down/up sample to 16khz and 48khz.

_Demo_

[ruel]

Thanks Demo. That's good information to know.

[JQuaglino]

Jeff,
I'm getting the mpegmux.ax crash on anything over SVCD bitrates. Also, is there anyway to specify files sizes. For exaple, if I'm recording a 2hr movie, it makes a 2 gig file. When converting to a vob in dvd authoring software the files a chopped to 1 gg. This is introducing sync problems i don't have with smaller files.

[Narflex]

Does anyone have information on the bitrates that the Creative card uses in their application?

What happens if you use Fair, Good, Great or Best? Do those crash?

[Narflex]

I'm also not sure what you mean by the file sizes, and what kind of sync problem are you having?

[JQuaglino]

I'd like to be able to set the files size to record 1 Gig files, press record, and have it generate movie01.mpg, movie02.mpg, movie03.mpg, etc. where all files are 1 gig. Thus, a 2 hour movie would be saved as 2 1gig files.

[Narflex]

That'll likely show up in a release soon, there's another feature being implemented that's almost the same as the one you're asking for so we'll just do 'em together.