BlackMagic Intensity Pro: recording HD via HDMI/Component

[Olias]

I got it to stream to the hard drive last night. Ended up using some of the SageTV filters to get it all working. I'll try to post the specifics when I'm home later tonight. CPU usage is about 65% on both cores of the AMD 6000+ when recording.
Now I need to tie this into SageTV and actually view it.

Almost there...

[dagar]

That's not too bad (considering). Was that 60% @ 720p like your earlier comment?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Endymion

Hey Stanger, do you know the part number, or name of that board? I work there, so maybe I can get my grubby hands on one to test out.

It would be this guy:
http://www.lsilogic.com/files/docs/m...s_pb_Final.pdf

[Olias]

Yep, I'm trying to do everything at 720p now. I can't see any difference between that and a higher resolution on my 38" RCA CRT monitor.

[Olias]

Just thought I'd post a quick update on my progress. I'm using SageTV 6.3 on a AMD X2 6000+ system running Vista.
So far, this is what I've done.

1. Installed Intensity Pro and captured uncompressed component video in GraphEdit to a file. To keep it simple, for now all sound is being captured as 2 channel.

2. Modified GraphEdit to covert input to mpeg2 and send to a file. I'm using a SageTV encoder thinking that this will provide the greatest compatibily for Sage itself. This produces a good file that can be successfully viewed in Windows Media Player.

3. Installed SGraphRecorder and set SageTV to use this as a tunig device using the pointers in post #3.

The problem is, it doesn't work. In Sage I when I try to view a station using the added tuner, I get a blank screen. The capture appears to be working because my CPU usage shoots up and a file is captured in Sage's TV Recordings folder. If I close Sage and open the captured file in WMP, the video is extremely jerky and I either get no sound or a sound like a tape player being run at high speed.

Since CPU usage while trying to view in Sage is close to 100%, I may be pressing the system too hard. There is no hardware video acceleration going on with the system's embedded X1250 graphics.
Tonight I'll try just recording a show in the background without watching anything to see if the resulting capture is any cleaner.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Olias

Just thought I'd post a quick update on my progress. I'm using SageTV 6.3 on a AMD X2 6000+ system running Vista.
So far, this is what I've done.

1. Installed Intensity Pro and captured uncompressed component video in GraphEdit to a file. To keep it simple, for now all sound is being captured as 2 channel.

2. Modified GraphEdit to covert input to mpeg2 and send to a file. I'm using a SageTV encoder thinking that this will provide the greatest compatibily for Sage itself. This produces a good file that can be successfully viewed in Windows Media Player.

3. Installed SGraphRecorder and set SageTV to use this as a tunig device using the pointers in post #3.

The problem is, it doesn't work. In Sage I when I try to view a station using the added tuner, I get a blank screen. The capture appears to be working because my CPU usage shoots up and a file is captured in Sage's TV Recordings folder. If I close Sage and open the captured file in WMP, the video is extremely jerky and I either get no sound or a sound like a tape player being run at high speed.

Since CPU usage while trying to view in Sage is close to 100%, I may be pressing the system too hard. There is no hardware video acceleration going on with the system's embedded X1250 graphics.
Tonight I'll try just recording a show in the background without watching anything to see if the resulting capture is any cleaner.

I am pretty sure that your system cannot convert from the uncompressed HDMI stream to MPEG2 in realtime. That's the source of the CPU burn and not the playback, at least from what I can tell about your setup, that's where I think it is.

I don't think you can do that on a conventional system, even with a quadcore CPU and multithreaded encoder...

There are specialized hardware solutions that can do this, but they are designed for studio quality encoding, sort of the same gear that encoded the superbowl HD video in realtime.

[dadavo]

Originally Posted by Olias

Just thought I'd post a quick update on my progress. I'm using SageTV 6.3 on a AMD X2 6000+ system running Vista.
So far, this is what I've done.

1. Installed Intensity Pro and captured uncompressed component video in GraphEdit to a file. To keep it simple, for now all sound is being captured as 2 channel.

2. Modified GraphEdit to covert input to mpeg2 and send to a file. I'm using a SageTV encoder thinking that this will provide the greatest compatibily for Sage itself. This produces a good file that can be successfully viewed in Windows Media Player.

3. Installed SGraphRecorder and set SageTV to use this as a tunig device using the pointers in post #3.

The problem is, it doesn't work. In Sage I when I try to view a station using the added tuner, I get a blank screen. The capture appears to be working because my CPU usage shoots up and a file is captured in Sage's TV Recordings folder. If I close Sage and open the captured file in WMP, the video is extremely jerky and I either get no sound or a sound like a tape player being run at high speed.

Since CPU usage while trying to view in Sage is close to 100%, I may be pressing the system too hard. There is no hardware video acceleration going on with the system's embedded X1250 graphics.
Tonight I'll try just recording a show in the background without watching anything to see if the resulting capture is any cleaner.

Interesting. The only audio issues I had where with audio/video sync but never anything like what you are having. What are you using for your audio source and are you converting to another format (i.e. MP3)? I keep mine as PCM which is what my STB box outputs. How is your storage setup? Are you using RAID and if so how many drives? Having fast storage is also crucial for getting smooth recording and playback. You can you the tool HD Tach to gauge your hard drive speed. My RAID was able to do 135 -140 MB sustained. Not the greatest but sufficient.

1. Make sure that the SGR Recorder is launched before Sage TV starts. If you have Sage TV setup as a service it will always start before SGR shortcut set in Windows Startup Folder.

2. Make sure that you have the correct Video Render/Decoder setup in Sage. I had to use VMR9. Anything else would give me no video or half screen. If you use Default for the Decoder then you should specifically set a decoder. Since you are using an ATI card try ATI MPEG Video Decoder. This should make sure your video card is doing the heavy lifting for playback. I have used ATI HD2400Pro and HD2600Pro....don't know if the X1250 is sufficient.

3. After starting Sage TV change channels see if you are able to get video or a No Video message. I have had issues with blank screen using a few of the beta Sage versions. After doing a clean OS and Sage 6.3 install this hasn't happened again.

4. Firewall issue. SGR needs to have port 6969 open, or whatever port you set in the SGR .ini file. I have Norton Firewall installed and until I disabled it or properly configured the traffic I was not geting any video.

Other things that could affect performance are other background tasks, indexing enabled on the storage you are recording to, virus scan programs.

Originally Posted by mikesm

I am pretty sure that your system cannot convert from the uncompressed HDMI stream to MPEG2 in realtime. That's the source of the CPU burn and not the playback, at least from what I can tell about your setup, that's where I think it is.

I don't think you can do that on a conventional system, even with a quadcore CPU and multithreaded encoder...

There are specialized hardware solutions that can do this, but they are designed for studio quality encoding, sort of the same gear that encoded the superbowl HD video in realtime.

Sorry I have to disagree as my rig is using a T2600 2.16GHz Core Duo and is doing very well at handling the task.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by dadavo

1. Make sure that the SGR Recorder is launched before Sage TV starts. If you have Sage TV setup as a service it will always start before SGR shortcut set in Windows Startup Folder.

So how do you launch SGR Recorder first if you run Sage as a service?

Wayne

[dadavo]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

So how do you launch SGR Recorder first if you run Sage as a service?

Wayne

You just don't run SageTV as a service. You can give it a try as Sage SHOULD be able to find the network encoder but in my experience when I had Sage running before SGR I was never able to get video. It may differ for you.

[DigitalMan]

There are utilities to run an app as a service, once you get SGR running as a service set it to start automatically and set a dependency on the sage service.

edit: I should point out the 'dependsonservice' setting goes in the registry, in HKLM\currentcontrolset\services\sagetv

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by dadavo

I


Sorry I have to disagree as my rig is using a T2600 2.16GHz Core Duo and is doing very well at handling the task.

Are you sure? You're feeding it uncompressed 1920x1080 pixels at 60hz via HDMI and it's doing compression in software to MPEG2 in realtime? Are you sure? What codec are you using that can do that in realtime on a T2600??

This doesn't smell right to me.

[dadavo]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Are you sure? You're feeding it uncompressed 1920x1080 pixels at 60hz via HDMI and it's doing compression in software to MPEG2 in realtime? Are you sure? What codec are you using that can do that in realtime on a T2600??

This doesn't smell right to me.

1280x720 at 60fps via HDMI and Component. As stated earlier I am using a GoMotion Direct Show filter.

http://ligos.com/index.php/home/products/gomotion/

UNTITLED.JPG

If you look at my graph I attached previously it shows the Decklink Video source attached to an AVI Decompressor then transcoded and muxed into an Mpeg file. I also did state earlier that for me to do 1080 I would need a faster procesor.

[AVeNVy]

I've been working on perfecting a setup similar to dadavo for the past year. In my case, I've tested just about every MPEG-2 encoder I could get my hands on and had the best success with the ATI AVIVO codecs for encoding. I am able to encode and simultaneuosly watch a single 1080i stream or simultaneuolsy encode two streams (but not watch) on an E6400. On a Q6600 I'm able to encode two streams simultaneuosly while watching live TV with almost a full CPU to spare. I have not gotten around to trying to encode three streams and watch live but I suspect it's possible with the Q6600, or even four simultaneous streams if you've got a client/server model with a dedicated server.

I use the maximum bitrate and quality setttings the AVIVO MPEG-2 encoder support, which is 20Mbps. At these settings, video quality is very high and file size is about 8GB per hour. Keep in mind this file size will be for all recordings, not just HD, as even standard def content is being fed to the Intensity at 1080i

I've also tested a large number of MPEG-2 decoders and found the Cyberlink decoder to work best. I'd recommend using the Overlay renderer as I was never able to get smooth playback using VMR. At least not when I was recording and playing on the same machine - I was able to get smooth playback using VMR with a client/server model.

I've also managed to capture AC3 unmodified but you will need an adiditonal sound card with digital audio capture for this. I use the M-Audio Transit USB but I expect other cards that don't touch the digital audio stream would also work.

I'm currently working on a full how-to and will post soon. However, for those of you with a Blackmagic Intensity Pro, an ATI video card, and a familiarity with sgraphrecorder, the attached screens should be enough to get you started.

--Nino

Update - See my How To post here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30607

[Olias]

It's now working for 720p captures in Sage!
Now I have to figure out how to get it to change channels.

[dadavo]

I use Hip and HipWsend. It is free. You can also use Girder. You will have to adjust the SGR .ini file to tell it that you are using and external tuner. If you specify in the .ini the program that you are using to tune, SGR will send that application only the channel number.

[heffneil]

I posted this question in another forum but it seems like there are a bunch of threads about the blackmagic card. Anyway are there any issues with copyright protection that you have seen with HDMI?

Thanks,

Neil

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by heffneil

I posted this question in another forum...

And it was answered in that other thread. The whole point of this is to avoid copy protection issues by capturing the analog component output instead of the protected HDMI output.

[dadavo]

Originally Posted by heffneil

I posted this question in another forum but it seems like there are a bunch of threads about the blackmagic card. Anyway are there any issues with copyright protection that you have seen with HDMI?

Thanks,

Neil

If your source is HDCP protected then you will not be able to capture video. If it is not copy protected then it will work, however you should know that depending on your source a firmware upgrade from the provider could enable protection so it may be better to stick with component.

[gplasky]

Again. Component is analog. HDCP doesn't apply to analog sources-only digital sources. HDMI and DVI sources. So HDCP doesn't come into play with this card.

Gerry

[dadavo]

The Blackmagic Intensity comes in 2 flavors one with only HDMI and one with HDMI and component. So if you don't want to worry about HDCP then you should get the Intensity Pro which has component and use that to capture your video. Not all HDMI sources are encrypted but you will be taking a gamble on that and whether it will remain that way.