HD Component capture with H.264 Encode

[mattdcknsn]

The only big problem I see in getting this incorporated into my setup will be the EPG data. I cant afford to replace all of my tuners with these so I am still going to have 2 SD tuners. So now I'll have to figure out a way to get Sage to recognize 4 different sources, 2 SD Verizon, 1 HD Verizon, 2 Verizon QAMs and 2 OTA.

3 Verizon sources and I can only have 1. This is going to be a difficult setup to maintain.

[bcjenkins]

Actually, I think there are 2 sources for VZ. A basic and extended. Also, for the QAM you don't need a lineup, you can just make sure the channel has the right station ID. It'll map to the lineup in use on another tuner.

B

[sleonard]

I'm going to be replacing 3 PVR-250's but I can't afford to do all three at once so I'm going to leave the HD channels disabled in the Sage Program Guide until all 3 have been replaced and I have also purchased 3 HD-100 extenders (none of my 3 PC clients are capable of playing HD either). Then when it's all set up and ready, I'll change the lineup. This will keep me from having to manage multiple conflicting lineups and/or recording shows that I will be unable to playback.

S

[SHS]

2 SD Verizon, 1 HD Verizon, 2 Verizon QAMs and 2 OTA

That is all possable
Mine like this
1 SD TWC, 1 HD TWC "SD Recoding", 1 HD Dish "SD Recoding", 2 TWC QAMs and 1 OTA
As you said yes it little difficult to get setup but maintain not all that bad

[matterw]

So, I see that Hauppauge and SageTV, both, have announced some type of support for SageTV. Fine. Riddle me this Batman...

How are either of these companies going to get around the DRM specs? It seems at a minimum M$ is trying to allow HD via Vista by embedding DRM technology into the OS. Pretty heavy for such a simple thing -- getting a cable signal into a card...

Thoughts?

Matt

[gplasky]

The Hauppauge and Sage solution is utilizing the component out of the cable box which is analog and not DRM'd. It's your digital sources that DRM'd via 5C, QAM and other flavors, I believe.

Gerry

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by matterw

So, I see that Hauppauge and SageTV, both, have announced some type of support for SageTV. Fine. Riddle me this Batman...

How are either of these companies going to get around the DRM specs? It seems at a minimum M$ is trying to allow HD via Vista by embedding DRM technology into the OS. Pretty heavy for such a simple thing -- getting a cable signal into a card...

Thoughts?

Matt

Easy,

There are no "DRM specs" for analog signals.

S

[mattdcknsn]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Actually, I think there are 2 sources for VZ. A basic and extended. Also, for the QAM you don't need a lineup, you can just make sure the channel has the right station ID. It'll map to the lineup in use on another tuner.

B

There are 2 sources, the basic is analog only (locals in SD) to get anything other than locals I have to use extended, things like sci-fi, history channel, nfl network, etc.

Originally Posted by SHS

That is all possable
Mine like this
1 SD TWC, 1 HD TWC "SD Recoding", 1 HD Dish "SD Recoding", 2 TWC QAMs and 1 OTA
As you said yes it little difficult to get setup but maintain not all that bad

I'll need to go through my setup again and make sure its setup correctly. Currently I have
1 Verizon extended for SD only
1 comcast remapped for verizon QAM tuners
1 OTA

If I add the HD capture card I need to either remove the verizon extended source and have comcast remapped to verizon channel numbers, for my SD channels. And then add Verizon extended back for the HD tuner. I then have to figure out the QAM mapings.

[evilpenguin]

It just occured to me that all of our current comskip methods won't be able to handle the h.264 streams... hmmm...

[MrD]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

It just occured to me that all of our current comskip methods won't be able to handle the h.264 streams... hmmm...

ffwd button?

[toricred]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

It just occured to me that all of our current comskip methods won't be able to handle the h.264 streams... hmmm...

I'd actually been thinking about this for a couple of days. At least we have a month or so for erik or jere to come up with a solution.

[peternm22]

I e-mailed jere about it, he doesn't have any immediate plans to add h.264 support.

Also, wouldn't performing comskip/showanalyzer on a h.264 1080i file be pretty processor intensive? Especially if you have more than one tuner.

-Peter

[gplasky]

You're also not going to be doing any editing on them with VideoRedo.


Gerry

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I e-mailed jere about it, he doesn't have any immediate plans to add h.264 support.

Also, wouldn't performing comskip/showanalyzer on a h.264 1080i file be pretty processor intensive? Especially if you have more than one tuner.

-Peter

I actually just posted on his request board to add support for it by simply using Dshow filters to decode the h.264 stream. Yes it probably would be a bit cpu intensive. I might not use it real time, but instead let it run late at night. Also it seems Showanalyzer uses far less cpu time than playback does for MPEG-2 streams.

Originally Posted by gplasky

You're also not going to be doing any editing on them with VideoRedo.


Gerry

Videoredo has claimed they're adding support for h.264 sometime in the future. But apparently they've been saying this for years.

Theres at least one tool I've found that should work for h.264 editing:

http://www.h264tscutter.de/

[rgreenpc]

Have we seen any sample encodes?

I am worried about the quality loss going digtal-> analog-> digital... then again its better than my svideo input I am sure.

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by rgreenpc

Have we seen any sample encodes?

I am worried about the quality loss going digtal-> analog-> digital... then again its better than my svideo input I am sure.

this is not an instance where you take a cd, record it to a tape, and then back to a digital source. Yes, component is analog, but its a quality video source. DVI/HDMI is not an error free/error correction cable. It degrades as well.

The point is the component at this point in time can't be encrypted like the cable companies encrypt signals across DVI/HDMI. That is why this option is so appealing.

I am not expecting video degradation in the process of the conversion any more than if we were using dvi/hdmi to get it into the computer. the degradation will be caused based on the compression.

[talbot3]

Originally Posted by mistergq

this is not an instance where you take a cd, record it to a tape, and then back to a digital source. Yes, component is analog, but its a quality video source. DVI/HDMI is not an error free/error correction cable. It degrades as well.

The point is the component at this point in time can't be encrypted like the cable companies encrypt signals across DVI/HDMI. That is why this option is so appealing.

I am not expecting video degradation in the process of the conversion any more than if we were using dvi/hdmi to get it into the computer. the degradation will be caused based on the compression.

There are additional steps though with a component capture. If you had dvi capture, the chain would be something like:

compressed digital source->uncompressed digital output to computer-> recompress captured video.

With component it would be something like:

compressed digital source->uncompressed digital video-> digital to anolog conversion-> analog output to computer-> analog to digital conversion ->recompress captured video.

The ideal way is to just capture the compressed digital source.

[stanger89]

HDCP prevents that though, you can't build a digital capture device with HDCP support, creating one without is rather pointless.

[polen]

Originally Posted by talbot3

The ideal way is to just capture the compressed digital source.

Which is what the Firewire STB setup does for you, but then you have to deal with the many different compression methods coming down that transport stream.

With this card you will have the one compression method that SageTV has to deal with, which will be much easier for SageTV to support.

-Polen

[dvd_maniac]

Am I right in thinking that this card will also allow SD capture, hopefully at better quality than s-video?

Does anybody know the bitrates/resolutions that this card will support?
IE: recording quality settings