Increasing Recording Quality for "Best" - (5.8GB/hr is less than half standard HDV!!)

[crobs808]

I have worked in the professional video industry for years, and the "Best" preset for recording is just unacceptable (it is half Blu-Ray actually less, around 12Mbps). I look at my SageTV recordings and there is a lot of blocking, and compression is obvious.

How do I manually up the bitrate? Blu-Ray is my target, and that is 25mbps on average, so 5.9 GB/hr is pretty low...actually about half of standard HDV cameras which record in 25Mbps. How can I up the bitrate for the "Best" setting? My computer can easily handle it, the only thing I worry about as a bottleneck I guess would be the USB cable. Why on earth didn't they make this thing Firewire?

Oh well...so, manual bitrate adjusting? I cannot find anything in the sage.properties file to change except the "transcode" bitrates, but that has nothing to do with Live TV recording right? Thanks.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by crobs808

Why on earth didn't they make this thing Firewire?

What "thing" are you talking about? I'm guessing HD-PVR. Pure digital tuners, as you probably know, don't use the encoding quality settings at all since the signal comes already encoded by the provider. (And 6 GB/hour is quite typical for those signals.)

As for USB v. Firewire, that shouldn't be an issue. USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps (nominal) should have plenty of headroom for HD recording. I run three ATSC USB tuners and one R5000 through a single USB 2.0 hub without issues.

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

What "thing" are you talking about? I'm guessing HD-PVR. Pure digital tuners, as you probably know, don't use the encoding quality settings at all since the signal comes already encoded by the provider. (And 6 GB/hour is quite typical for those signals.)

As for USB v. Firewire, that shouldn't be an issue. USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps (nominal) should have plenty of headroom for HD recording. I run three ATSC USB tuners and one R5000 through a single USB 2.0 hub without issues.

Yeah, everyone looks at the specs on paper and says USB2.0 is better or as good as Firewire, but I have multiple USB2.0 and Firewire devices, and the Firewire once get much closer to their theoretical limit, and have much better throughput.

But anyway, USB2.0 is what I have to work with, so how do I manually increase the bitrate beyond 5.9GB/hr? The video files encoded on my U-Verse DVR are MUCH higher quality (not just slightly) than what SageTV captures from the DVR....lots of quality is being lost when transferred, so again, how can I manually increase the bitrate it records at?

Thanks

[crobs808]

I found another thread that said I can add this into my sage.properties file to get 25Mbps...
mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=25000000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

But where would I put it?

I also tried (but no luck)...
mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

Source (from 2004): http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...0&postcount=15

Have things changed since then? Can you no longer add your own custom recording profiles?

Thanks!

[stanger89]

1) What tuner/encoder are you using? As noted by Greg, if you're using a digital tuner (ATSC/QAM) quality settings have absolutely no effect.

2) What are you recording? You'll be very lucky to be getting over 12-15Mbps from your source. OTA quite often bit starved by subchannels and cable/sat are usually worse.

I checked a few recordings and my OTA is around 12-15 Mbps, MPEG-2, and Dish HD looks to be on the order of 5Mbps H.264. You can "target" Blu-ray all you want, but it doesn't matter how many bits you throw at it on the recorder end, you can't match 40Mbps AVC if your source is only 1/10th that to start with.

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by stanger89

1) What tuner/encoder are you using? As noted by Greg, if you're using a digital tuner (ATSC/QAM) quality settings have absolutely no effect.

2) What are you recording? You'll be very lucky to be getting over 12-15Mbps from your source. OTA quite often bit starved by subchannels and cable/sat are usually worse.

I checked a few recordings and my OTA is around 12-15 Mbps, MPEG-2, and Dish HD looks to be on the order of 5Mbps H.264. You can "target" Blu-ray all you want, but it doesn't matter how many bits you throw at it on the recorder end, you can't match 40Mbps AVC if your source is only 1/10th that to start with.

HD-PVR, and it is from U-Verse HD source, not OTA/ATSC

So you are saying that U-Verse looks good because it has a better built in encoder/2-pass probably? Dang. Well, I at least want to max it out on the SageTV end, and try, so what line do I need to add to my sage.properties file?

[davenlr]

HDPVR wasnt around in 2004.

From the HDPVR website:
# Hardware encoder

* H.264 AVCHD video encoder
* AC-3 audio encoding
* Recording datarate: from 1 to 13.5 Mbits/sec (user selectable)
* Recording format: up to 1080i from component video (YCrCb)
Note: the video input format determines the recorded format. For example, 1080i input records at 1080i, 720P records at 720P, etc.. Any other format conversions needs to be done with the MediaConvert program (supplied).

13.5 is the max the unit will do.

Try your properties file edit with that bitrate.

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by davenlr

HDPVR wasnt around in 2004.

From the HDPVR website:
# Hardware encoder

* H.264 AVCHD video encoder
* AC-3 audio encoding
* Recording datarate: from 1 to 13.5 Mbits/sec (user selectable)
* Recording format: up to 1080i from component video (YCrCb)
Note: the video input format determines the recorded format. For example, 1080i input records at 1080i, 720P records at 720P, etc.. Any other format conversions needs to be done with the MediaConvert program (supplied).

13.5 is the max the unit will do.

Try your properties file edit with that bitrate.

Yes, I already did that (see post #4), and a new setting is not showing up in SageTV...the max it shows is still 5.9 GB/hr...so again - what is the exact line of code I need to add into my properties file?

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by crobs808

Yes, I already did that (see post #4), and a new setting is not showing up in SageTV...the max it shows is still 5.9 GB/hr...so again - what is the exact line of code I need to add into my properties file?

Read this thread for info:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...40&postcount=1
IIRC 5.9 was about the best the HD-PVR will do.

EDIT: I see you've already seen the thread I referenced. Are you not getting the setting in your recording quality settings menu? When I tried it out (18 months ago) I got an extra choice of 6.9 GB Hr. Havn't tried it lately because I was getting the same file sizes per hour with either 5.9 or 6.9 so I figured I was at the HD-PVRs limit already with 5.9.

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Read this thread for info:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...40&postcount=1
IIRC 5.9 was about the best the HD-PVR will do.

EDIT: I see you've already seen the thread I referenced. Are you not getting the setting in your recording quality settings menu? When I tried it out (18 months ago) I got an extra choice of 6.9 GB Hr. Havn't tried it lately because I was getting the same file sizes per hour with either 5.9 or 6.9 so I figured I was at the HD-PVRs limit already with 5.9.

I am not getting the extra choice in SageTV...pleas ehelp me with that, I need to start there before I can even TRY to record anything in 6.9 vs 5.9. See my line of code above...I just am trying to get an answer as to what I have wrong, please.

Thanks

[Fuzzy]

13.5Mbps is equal to 5.93GB/hr. That is the max the H.264 encoder in the HD-PVR can handle. Also, as already mentioned here, and elsewhere, you are not going to see any improvement higher than that anyways, as there is no broadcaster pushing media in a high enough quality to matter (OTA is the best, and it averages about 14Mbps MPEG2, which would be equivalent to about 8Mbps H.264 in terms of quality).

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

13.5Mbps is equal to 5.93GB/hr. That is the max the H.264 encoder in the HD-PVR can handle. Also, as already mentioned here, and elsewhere, you are not going to see any improvement higher than that anyways, as there is no broadcaster pushing media in a high enough quality to matter (OTA is the best, and it averages about 14Mbps MPEG2, which would be equivalent to about 8Mbps H.264 in terms of quality).

It looks like SageTV is the bottleneck here. I used TotalMediaExtreme to record the same exact recording from my DVR again, and the quality difference was drastic. The file from TotalMediaExtreme was the same size, yet crisper, less muddy, and not nearly as much blocking...I actually had to look for it, whereas the recording from SageTV was noticeable the whole time. So, the problem here lies in the way SageTV encodes it, and not the codec itself, since I have used the same H.264 and MPEG-2 codecs in other programs to encode just fine. Bummer.

Also, is there an alternative to the HD-PVR that allows for 25Mbps recording? 13.5 is WAY compressed. Even my HD camera (Panasonic HVX200) outputs at 100Mbps.

[Fuzzy]

were you playing back the files with the same player? SageTV does not do any encoding of the video, it simply receivs the HD-PVR's encoded stream and writes it to disc.

Also, you've GOT to stop comparing bitrates between different codecs.. they really are apples and oranges... HDV uses MPEG-2, so 25Mbps HDV is actually not THAT much better than 13.5Mbps H.264.

DV and DVCPro use a much older, and simpler, straight DCT compression, which process every frame individually, without any difference maps at all, therefore, there is very little actual comrpession going on.

Aside from all this, you are trying to compare these high bitrate settings on media that is brought to your house at only 6.5Mbps over UVerse (that's only 2.85GB/hr).

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

were you playing back the files with the same player? SageTV does not do any encoding of the video, it simply receivs the HD-PVR's encoded stream and writes it to disc.

Also, you've GOT to stop comparing bitrates between different codecs.. they really are apples and oranges... HDV uses MPEG-2, so 25Mbps HDV is actually not THAT much better than 13.5Mbps H.264.

Actually the WAY a file is encoded makes a big difference. SageTV tells the encoder how to encoder, meaning 1-pass, 2-pass, CBR/VBR, etc...along with a lot of other things in the codec it is probably totally ignoring like motion estimation (which is why fast pans come out blocky).

Anyway, none of this matters...the point is that When I watch a recorded show from my U-Verse DVR on my computer it looks great! When I watch what SageTV recorded it looks bad...so your point about no provider sending a signal higher than 13.5mbps doesn't matter...because the "copy" of the recording from the HD-PVR is still very noticeably worse than the file on my U-Verse DVR. So my beef here is with the HD-PVR, ok...I will recognize that, but SageTV is also to blame for not doing it's own encoding (like Total Media Extreme does - which is why the "copy" that it makes comes out way better) - so I will just have to accept that SageTV cannot give me the quality that Total Media Extreme does, which is a bummer.

-edit-
oh - to answer you question, yes, I watched them with the same player. Also I did frame comparisons, side by side looking at them frame by frame in Adobe Premiere Pro.

This all STILL does not answer my question about why I am not seeing a new custom recording option in SageTV (back in post #4) and what line of code I need to put in my sage.properties file. I appreciate all the feedback, but that is my original question that still has not been answered. Thanks.

[Fuzzy]

I don't believe TME does any encoding either.. the encoding is done by the silicon in the HD-PVR. Also, this is real time encoding.. there is no possible way to do 2-pass encoding real time. You say you are copying a file off your uverse DVR? how is this done (sorry don't have uverse). If this is an actual file copy of the direct stream, then of course it is going to be higher quality. they are compressing it with multi thousand dollar encoders at the head end for broadcast. the HD-PVR is a consumer level device, that has to deal with recompression of a lossy source. this is never easy, because it ends up having to compress the artifacts in the source stream, not just the image, negatively impacting the quality/bitrate capabilities.

As for why you aren't seeing your 25Mbps custom quality setting, my guess is because it is impossible for the HD-PVR to provide that setting. the reason you aren't seeing the 13.5Mbps recording option, is because it is already ther ein the built in options.

[davenlr]

Originally Posted by crobs808

so again - what is the exact line of code I need to add into my properties file?

mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by crobs808

Anyway, none of this matters...the point is that When I watch a recorded show from my U-Verse DVR on my computer it looks great!

One thing I think you are missing, is when you "record" a show on the U-Verse, you aren't doing anything but capturing the bit stream. And then that is being digitally to the set.

When you record with the HDPVR, you are first converting a digital stream to analog, then capturing the analog stream and converting it to digital in real time. You ARE going to loose quality!

[paulbeers]

I'm going to step in here and make the comment that I think there seems to be a lack of understanding of what is going on by Crobs808.

First off, as everyone has stated, the HDPVR is only capable of 13.5mbps (set by Hauppauge) which doing the math is as follows:

13.5 mbps / 8 (conversion from bits to Bytes) = 1.69 MBps x 3600 (conversion from seconds to hours) = 6084 MBphr / 1024 (converting from MB to GB) = 5.94GB /hr.

Setting the HDPVR to try to record at anything higher than 13.5mbps (or 5.9GB/hr) will not work as it was not designed to do higher than that.

Now you keep saying that recordings from TME look better than Sage. Are you also playing back the video in TME when recording in TME? What Decoders did you set in Sage for playback? You need to understand that Decoders are just as important as the Encoder when recording and playing everything back. I.E. you could have the worlds best recording, but it could look like crap if you didn't set your decoder to something decent.

The world of Videography / Professional Video is considerably different han the world of HTPC's. These are consumer grade devices that have limitations. This is a hobby of ours for years now (built my first Sage box in 2003). Throw away what you think you know and let us help you.



Edit: A few other words of wisdom here: First off HDV is recorded in MPEG2 vs the HDPVR which is h.264. H.264 generally needs only half the bit rate of MPEG2 in order to maintain the same quality. This is why your HDV is twice the bit rate. Further, Blu-Ray is captured at 1080P whereas television is either 1080i or 720P. Both of the television formats are approximately half the resolution of Blu-Ray which is also why the HDPVR (Which is to capture television signals) uses a bitrate that again is half that of Blu-Ray.

[stanger89]

FWIW this is the line from my sage.properties file, shows up at the top of the quality list for the HD PVR:

mmc/python2_encoding/H.264\ Best\ VBR=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=1|outputstreamtype\=1

If you're running Vista or Win 7 you have to make sure you're editing the properties file in the correct location (potentially the Virtualstore location).

And finally , FWIW, I've not noticed any difference between Sage's "Best", my "H.264 Best VBR" and my R5000.

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by stanger89

FWIW this is the line from my sage.properties file, shows up at the top of the quality list for the HD PVR:

mmc/python2_encoding/H.264\ Best\ VBR=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=1|outputstreamtype\=1

If you're running Vista or Win 7 you have to make sure you're editing the properties file in the correct location (potentially the Virtualstore location).

And finally , FWIW, I've not noticed any difference between Sage's "Best", my "H.264 Best VBR" and my R5000.

Bummer...I think this is just an issue for me since I have worked in the industry for so long...I can tell minor quality differences and they really bug me, esepcially when I have other hardware than can go up to 100Mbps, capturing over firewire, and this device is so limited...The technology is out there, but there is nothing better than the HD-PVR for us to use? Bummer.

thanks for all the input, and yes, of course I watched the recordings in the same program, and even side by side in VLC...still not good quality compared to the TME recording.

-C