Quality Settings

[rickgillyon]

Over the last week I tried adjusting my Quality Settings. I have 4 DVB tuners, which give me excellent MPG at 1.5 to 1.7 GB/Hr. I also have a Hauppauge PVR350 which provides input from my Cable box. This was set (I thought) to DVD Quality.

Anyway, last week I turned my default Quality down to Great, then yesterday to DVD Extra Long Play (trying to match up my analogue and digital recordings so my XviD encodes can use the same %). I was surprised to see that the filesizes haven't changed! It seems that the Quality settings in Sage don't have any effect unless the card supports it, and it appears the PVR350 doesn't.

So two questions:
1. Can anyone confirm that the PVR350 will not change its encoding quality dependent on the Sage setting?

2. If not, can anyone advise a card which will take output from my cable box (RGB, S-Video) and will allow the quality to be changed on a per-recording basis by Sage?

TIA!

[domc]

Yeah, I've been playing around with the settings too but have not recorded anything on the lower settings yet.

When I go into the Recording Qualities section there is two options.

Default and Individual capture device (Hauppauge WinTV pvr pcII Capter).

Which one takes precident (sagetv use)? Do I need to go into the Hauppauge TV and change the setting there too?

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by domc

Which one takes precident (sagetv use)?

If you set a Quality on an individual recording, that takes precedence over Tuner.
If you set a Quality on an individual Tuner, that takes precedence over general SageTV.
If you haven't set a Quality on an individual recording or on a tuner, the SageTV general preference is used.

Originally Posted by domc

Do I need to go into the Hauppauge TV and change the setting there too?

It looks that way, that's one of the things I'm trying to confirm. I think if you only have PVR350s, then forget the Sage settings, I don't think they make any difference. Hopefully someone can clarify...

[Opus4]

Per the info from p. 168 in the v4.1 manual, here is what it is supposed to do:

• If simply capturing a digital stream, the recording quality setting doesn't have any effect. (might not be mentioned in the manual) Otherwise...
• If a Manual Recording or Favorite has a specified recording quality to use, use that. Otherwise...
• If the capture device has a default recording quality, use that. Otherwise...
• Use the overall default recording quality.

Edit: and yes, it should work with a 350.

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Edit: and yes, it should work with a 350.

So, never used tuner- or recording-based quality - any idea why a 40-minute recording on Great and a 40-minute recording on DVD Extra Long would be the same size to within a few bytes?

[Opus4]

Look at the recording details screen for each recording & see what quality setting it shows near the bottom of the list. (Encoded by: ...)

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Look at the recording details screen for each recording & see what quality setting it shows near the bottom of the list. (Encoded by: ...)

Just shows the tuner, not any quality settings.

[Opus4]

What exactly does it say on that line?

I was going to suggest making sure that the recording was made after the setting was changed, but if it isn't listing the quality used, then about all I can suggest is to send a log file of this to SageTV.

(I also moved this to the beta forum, since I believe you previously said you were using a beta version.)

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Encoded By: Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture
Files : [...]
Recording File Size: 2.09GB

This is on a one-hour recording (no padding), with Quality set to 1.6GB/Hr.

What should I send to Sage? Just the sagetv_0.txt from when the recording took place?

Anyone know if the Hauppauge setup needs to be any particular way to make this work?

[rickgillyon]

Hmmm, section from the log from last night's:

Fri 3/10 23:00:00.035 Change in record to another show. Entering device record mode. - NOW
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.035 Seeker.startRecord(Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture FA[stationID=19334 Cold Case time=Fri 3/10 23:00:00.000 dur=1:00:00], currTime=Fri 3/10 23:00:00.032) currRecord=null switch=false
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.035 Setting up MMC video for recording new show & tuning channel conn=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture Composite
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.036 VideoStorage for new file: V:\PVR - Use All
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.037 MediaFile created subfile:V:\PVR\ColdCase-APerfectDay-6450865-0.mpg MediaFile[id=6580250 A[6450865,6434314,"Cold Case",19334@0310.23:00,60] host=PVRecorder encodedBy=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture ]
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.040 Added:MediaFile[id=6580250 A[6450865,6434314,"Cold Case",19334@0310.23:00,60] host=PVRecorder encodedBy=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture  V:\PVR\ColdCase-APerfectDay-6450865-0.mpg, Seg0[Fri 3/10 23:00:00.036-Thu 1/1 1:00:00.000]]
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.041 Seeker channel string=120
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.068 setEncodingProperties0 70537168 
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.071 Set encoding property audiooutputmode to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.071 Set encoding property audiocrc to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.071 Set encoding property gopsize to 15
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.071 Playing IR tune command of 120
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property videobitrate to 4000000
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property inversetelecine to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property closedgop to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property vbr to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property outputstreamtype to 10
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property width to 720
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property height to 576
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property audiobitrate to 384
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property audiosampling to 48000
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property disablefilter to 1
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.072 Set encoding property medianfilter to 3
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.073 Set encoding property fps to 30
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.073 Set encoding property ipb to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.073 Set encoding property deinterlace to 0
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.073 Set encoding property aspectratio to 1

I assume the important bit is "Set encoding property videobitrate to 4000000" - what does this mean, anyone know?

[Ian Norman]

Do you not have to set "mmc/python2" to specify the encoding quality.
A PVR350 is a python 2 device.

or is that setting not used anymore ????????

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Ian Norman

Do you not have to set "mmc/python2" to specify the encoding quality.
A PVR350 is a python 2 device.

or is that setting not used anymore ????????

Beats me!
No mention of "python" in my sage.properties.

[Ian Norman]

Well I presumed ( unless the situation has changed ) that anyone with a Python2 based card such as a PVR350 was required to add the quality settings in the sage.properties file so that sagetv could set the PVR350 to do as you asked

These are the settings that I always used ( when I used analog TV )

http://www.sage.tv/2_papers/HPquality.txt

Cheers

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

What should I send to Sage? Just the sagetv_0.txt from when the recording took place?

Yes, you can email that log file to betatest at sagetv.com. It probably wouldn't hurt to include your sage.properties file.

Speaking of which... Have you tried reconfiguring? Save your current properties someplace, then get rid of sage.properties & its autobackup. Restart SageTV to do a complete reconfiguration & see what happens after that.

Among the differences in your log blurb vs. mine when a recording started is that yours said:
Fri 3/10 23:00:00.068 setEncodingProperties0 70537168

Mine said:
Fri 3/10 13:00:00.658 setEncodingProperties0 44191672 Great

Mine always listed the quality setting 'Great' after the encoder name.

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Beats me!
No mention of "python" in my sage.properties.

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think the default recording quality properties are shown in the properties file any more. (They are still used; they just aren't listed.) I'm not sure if you can make them get listed.

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Okay, I'm trying a few things out before bugging anyone at Sage with this (I'll just bug Andy instead... )

I set a recording this morning and set the quality on the recording itself, and it was used and it was noted on the recording. I've now set the DVD Extra Long on the Tuner and General options, and I've set recordings using default and specific options. I'll let you know how they work out.

Conclusions so far:
Don't need the Python settings
Quality settings *sometimes* work...

If I drop my Properties, won't I have to define my tuners and lineups and mappings again? Don't fancy that!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

If I drop my Properties, won't I have to define my tuners and lineups and mappings again? Don't fancy that!

Yeah, but that's why I suggested saving your old properties file. Just configure the problem tuner & see what happens. If it doesn't help, switch back to the old prop file. If it does help... well, finish reconfiguring & keep using the new file. (Might still be useful to send the info to SageTV if that works, so they can try to figure it out.)

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Okay, it now seems to be accepting the global and per-tuner settings. The only difference that I can see is that, on the first attempt, I didn't quit and restart SageTV. Whether this is an issue or not I don't know!

Thanks for the help.