Hardware recommendations for 60 tuners

[dvd_maniac]

Yes you can use two of these. But troy is right in that the quality stinks at low bitrates. I would just do lower quality mpeg-2 before using the plextor device. I bought 2 of them when they came out and ended up giving them away.

Doing a single pass encode into X264/ACC using my Q6600 is actually faster then realtime and gives pretty good quality. a one hour video ends up being about 80-120MB and takes about 20 minutes to encode.

But 10 tuners per PC would require about 3 such encoding PC's per Recording PC to keep up...

Do you plan on keeping every recording indefinitely or for a specific amount of time?

[shahfar]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Yes you can use two of these. But troy is right in that the quality stinks at low bitrates. I would just do lower quality mpeg-2 before using the plextor device. I bought 2 of them when they came out and ended up giving them away.

Doing a single pass encode into X264/ACC using my Q6600 is actually faster then realtime and gives pretty good quality. a one hour video ends up being about 80-120MB and takes about 20 minutes to encode.

But 10 tuners per PC would require about 3 such encoding PC's per Recording PC to keep up...

Do you plan on keeping every recording indefinitely or for a specific amount of time?

I have to keep all recordings indefinitely, therefore, the requirement of mpeg4 encoding. How much space does the lower quality mpeg2 take actually?? If its comparable to divx in low bit rates, then I think I can make do with this.

[dvd_maniac]

SVCD Extra long play is about 700MB/hr and I find the quality somewhat lacking. Nothing like the 12mbit/s(5.9GB/hr) encoded to X264 files I archive.
You are talking about (60*24)1440 hours of video everyday. That would be 1TB of video using even the 700MB/hr low quality. The 2GB/hr quality would be closer to 3TB/day and more than likely the lowest quality you'd find exceptable.
I really think you would NEED to do some sort of automated encoding unless you're a millionaire and can buy a few 1TB drive everyday...
1TB drives are around $240USD so, @700MB/hr 30*240=$7200/Month, @2GB/hr 90*$240=$21600/month just in Hard Drive cost alone.

Using realtime DivX encoders, like the Plextor, would not save much space at all. Also, the upcoming H.264 hardware encoders I hear can only go as low as 5mbit/s which is a bit higher then 2GB/hr and would require Component cables for all tuners.

Your best bet might be to have the PC's for capturing and additional PC's for encoding and automate it so that the video gets encoded, archived and deletes the original...

[shahfar]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

SVCD Extra long play is about 700MB/hr and I find the quality somewhat lacking. Nothing like the 12mbit/s(5.9GB/hr) encoded to X264 files I archive.
You are talking about (60*24)1440 hours of video everyday. That would be 1TB of video using even the 700MB/hr low quality. The 2GB/hr quality would be closer to 3TB/day and more than likely the lowest quality you'd find exceptable.
I really think you would NEED to do some sort of automated encoding unless you're a millionaire and can buy a few 1TB drive everyday...
1TB drives are around $240USD so, @700MB/hr 30*240=$7200/Month, @2GB/hr 90*$240=$21600/month just in Hard Drive cost alone.

Using realtime DivX encoders, like the Plextor, would not save much space at all. Also, the upcoming H.264 hardware encoders I hear can only go as low as 5mbit/s which is a bit higher then 2GB/hr and would require Component cables for all tuners.

Your best bet might be to have the PC's for capturing and additional PC's for encoding and automate it so that the video gets encoded, archived and deletes the original...

Please check this link:

http://www.plextor.com/english/produ...edtechspec.htm

I am looking at the DivX Portable (Medium Quality).

[gplasky]

People who used this in the past weren't too happy with the video quality and didn't realize that much file space saving from other mpeg qualities you can record in.

Gerry

[shahfar]

Originally Posted by gplasky

People who used this in the past weren't too happy with the video quality and didn't realize that much file space saving from other mpeg qualities you can record in.

Gerry

Even if I use the lowest possible quality? I do not care about the quality.

[paulbeers]

I'm made it a rule not to get involved in these threads, because usually after all the "trouble" shooting is completed, then the OP disappears and I feel like it was just a waste of my time....

However I will throw my .02 worth in here.

DVD_Maniac is right. the only way this is feasible would be to add about 3-4 computers per tuner pc that all they do is re-encode video. If I were to do this, I would have 6 (or so) computers set to recorde. They could have minimal processors (something like a Intel E4300 or an AMD X2 and even these would probably be overkill) since all they need to do is handle I/O and nothing else. These would each house a RAID 0 (if you really call that a RAID) of 2 - 500GB drives for super fast I/0. That would 6 of the computers needed. Then one would need 30 encoding machines. These would house the "good processors" (Something like a Q6600 or better, but definately quad core). They would run off a script that would convert any video from MPEG to DVIX or some other format (see DVD_Maniac's earlier recommendation). Then you would also need a helluva File Server. I would have a huge RAID 5 (maybe even Raid 6) file server. Once again this server wouldn't necessarily need a superfast processor (Intel E4xxx or AMD X2), but would need all the hard drive space you can get and a nice controller (or multiple). I would have a script set up on the fileserver to every hour pull all the data off the I/o machines (other then what is currently being recorded) and transfer it to the file server for more "permanent" storage.

Just in hard drives alone, you are looking at 37 basic drives for the OS (always use seperate HD for OS when doing high I/O "stuff"), 12 - 500GB HD for your I/O machines, and probably something like 8 - 1TB drives for file storage for a total in the neighborhood of $5000 in drives (not to mention motherboards, processors, memory, cases, power supplies, etc. etc).

P.S. @ 120MB per hour after re-encoding and only 7TB available after RAID 5 in this current setup....this setup would last (120MB/Hr x 60 Channels = 7200MB/H or appx 7.2GB per hr....7000GB / 24 Hrs = 291 / 7.2) approximately 40 Days. So I guess you can figure you will need to spend $2000 approximately every month for new HD's..... Or figure out some kind of Tape Backup system.

EDIT: Did some poor math, so redid a few numbers.

[paulbeers]

Only because my wife is asleep and I'm bored...

The above mentioned setup would run $24000 if ordered from Newegg WITHOUT tuners buying only the bare-essentials.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by shahfar

Even if I use the lowest possible quality? I do not care about the quality.

I never used it. I can only quote other people who had.

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

I bought the Plextor wanting t use the DivX option. After about a week of that I went back to the mpeg2 recording in DVD quality. The DivX encoding was only single pass and the space saving was so minimal that it wasn't worth the extra cycles to encode in DivX. There is a plugin that does the encoding on the fly as well but for me if you truly are going to use SageTV as a DVR solution you will be deleting the shows after sometime or keeping very specific shows for later. In that case you can do a thourough job of encoding to save space.

Also keep in mind Sage would wrap the recording in a mpeg2 wrapper to support timeshifting. Most people have better quality and smaller filesize converting after the fact. (Built into Sage and also a plugin is available.)

But as everyone is saying you're going to need so much horsepower and storage that if this is for some type of business it is almost economically unfeasible. And difficult to automate. It will require human labor to complete the product. To me it would appear to have a very high cost per clip produced.

Gerry

[shahfar]

Thank you for your reply paulbeers and gplasky. I appreciate your input on this. But the thing is. I have not been able to actually finalize the hardware (tuners) that would be used for this setup. What would you suggest? The plextor DivX usb tuner? the 500MCE? or the PVR USB2? or maybe something else entirely. Once the tuners are finalized, I can work on storage. I could even work with MP4.

[gplasky]

I think if you go with any type of internal card (PCI) you're going to run into the issue of running out of hardware interrupts (and/or conflicts). You're safest bet should be USB and most motherboards have between 6-10 availa ble on the mb. You want to use those as opposed to a USB hub. (If you use a hub make sure it is a powered hub.) Search the forums but I seem to recall some issues with the Plextr. (Maybe it was the earlier model)For the least amount of issues I would stick with tuners that are on Sage's approved list.

Gerry

[dvd_maniac]

The problem I had mostly with the PLextor was corrupt recordings. I think it was fixed in un updated driver. But I was still having issues and along with it's limited 6mbit/s recording rate, I had to give them up.

[DigitalMan]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I'm not sure that the HDHR is what he's looking for since space and archiving will become a problem and Video quality is not his top concern.

You should also consider encoding all the video to a smaller filesize. You're going to have a bunch of PC's. You might as well put them to work.

Actually, on one of the silicondust forums (makers of HDHR) there is a mention of professional-level rackmount hardware they're coming out with shortly that have 10 tuners in each box.

Seems like its worth looking into if true.

edit: looks like its *only* 8 tuners. just a brief blurb here: http://www.silicondust.com/forum/vie...highlight=rack

[setherd]

oh hell! here's my 2 cents....
stick to 1 type of tuner
Get some PCIe usb cards and USB tuners (perhaps the AVerMedia M038 USB)

I would suggest NOT storing it on local computers (for long term storage that is)

it sounds like you're going to manually check and mark the commercials. OK do that, cut out the commercials. I'd say then have an automated job run to cut and move the commercials then compress them.
Have a couple storage servers, if all you have to do is compress the COMMERCIALS, that will be short files and somewhat easy i think.

it sounds like the hardest part will be marking and editing and identifying the commercials. you may even want to send the cut commercials back to the recording boxes for compressing. If the recording is done in hardware then I think they will have enough leftover CPU power to do some other jobs. just a thought.

the silicon dust device sounds like it might be better for you but i'm guessing is large HD captures.

we'd all like to hear what you end up doing to solve your problem

good luck!

[hemicuda]

if all he's going to keep is the commercials out of the shows that will significantly reduce the required storage space. will the skipping software automagically invert the cutpoints?

[CollinR]

You may be better off with what we in CCTV call a streamer, you can easily have 60 of them encoding 24/7.

BUT!

They have abosutely no real GUI and no TV like functionality, they are more of an inexpensive way to digitize mass video. They have no guide data functionality, no nothing like TV you get chitty video with low bitrate thats made to run 24/7 for 20 years.

The only reason I can see for a system like you discribe is for a broadcaster to document everything they have broadcast. If thats the case quality of the video is far less important compared to dealing with the data captured.

You can email me designs at lowvoltageonline dot com, it may be possible to use the SageTV imported video area to deal with this but you would lookup the video by say channel-date-time rather then all badass like Sage does it.

EDIT:

Well it's possible you could use these devices as network encoders for SageTV, if so thats the road I would go.