HDMI Capture Card

[schumbox]

Adding an HDMI capture card, and am not able to see it listed under Setup Wizard when adding a new input Source. Does anyone know how Sage adds the list for video capture devices? Looking to see if there is a way to add it manually? Am able to use the capture card with another software program and view video. Would like to integrate it with Sage if possible. (Running V9.1.2.662)
Thanks!

[JustFred]

The capture card needs to be present at the time Sage starts up. If the card was added while Sage is running, then stop and restart Sage. It should show up in Sages list of devices without needing to do anything else.

Which model capture card is causing issues?

[schumbox]

I have rebooted multiple times, verified driver was successfully installed. I am able to open feed from other program successfully.

It's a cheap Chinese HDMI Capture card. Goes under the Timeleak HD72A name (along with other rebranded names). In Sage.properties I can see mmc/ignore_encoders=Timeleak HD Capture|.... along with others. Tried removing this before a reboot, and was still unable to have it show under Sage's HW Dropdown.

I have used Hauppauge Colossus before, and had no problems adding the HW.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by schumbox

I have rebooted multiple times, verified driver was successfully installed. I am able to open feed from other program successfully.

It's a cheap Chinese HDMI Capture card. Goes under the Timeleak HD72A name (along with other rebranded names). In Sage.properties I can see mmc/ignore_encoders=Timeleak HD Capture|.... along with others. Tried removing this before a reboot, and was still unable to have it show under Sage's HW Dropdown.

I have used Hauppauge Colossus before, and had no problems adding the HW.

That list is permanent and always overwritten. You can't override it. If it's on that list, you can be assured it was enough of a problem that it not only isn't supported, but it likely has significant issues playing nicely with SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

It is not that it is a hard-coded list, it's is just that sage is designed to work with directshow or BDA sources that are configured and behave a certain way, and if a card doesn't do so (likely the result of a non-standard crossbar arrangement), it will not allow it to be used. It may show in your log a general reason why it failed, but I'm not certain on the level of logging in that part of the code (some of it native code).

That is not to say there is no way to use this card with sage - you may be able to use ffmpeg to grab the stream and send it to sage via OpenDCT - but it would take some manual fiddling to come up with the appropriate commandline to be used.

[Fuzzy]

Honestly, if the card does perform well, it may be worth looking to adding a specific match to sage for it, sort of to force it to be available.

[EnterNoEscape]

I did a little Googling on this card and my primary concern is recent and WHQL drivers for Windows appear to be hard to find. The newest I found were from 2012. Linux support appears to be nearly non-existent. 1080i/p is capped at 24fps which would be ok if you were capturing Bluray, but broadcast is 30fps. However at its sub-$50 price tag, I suppose these issues can be overlooked. Even if you get it working, I wouldn't be sure about how long it will continue to be usable, especially since Windows 10 is such a moving target.

[SHS]

The problem with it is a Software Cap
It common know as Trident 7160 HD and the YK761H

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by SHS

The problem with it is a Software Cap
It common know as Trident 7160 HD and the YK761H

True. But even if it is software compression, that's not really as much of a problem these days. I run software compression on every tuner I use, by transcoding on the fly from MPEG-2 to h.264 in openDCT, and it isn't a problem for the cpu.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

True. But even if it is software compression, that's not really as much of a problem these days. I run software compression on every tuner I use, by transcoding on the fly from MPEG-2 to h.264 in openDCT, and it isn't a problem for the cpu.

Transcoding is one thing but on Fly Real-time Encoding from a NoN compression or AVI/RAW format is whole diff ball of wax as SageTV doesn't support HD cap that I know of was something like that every add which I wasn't ware of.
It that where the case then any run mill HD software cap card should work out the box but I'm aware of any other old school AVI/RAW TV tuners or Frame Grabber.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by SHS

Transcoding is one thing but on Fly Real-time Encoding from a NoN compression or AVI/RAW format is whole diff ball of wax as SageTV doesn't support HD cap that I know of was something like that every add which I wasn't ware of.
It that where the case then any run mill HD software cap card should work out the box but I'm aware of any other old school AVI/RAW TV tuners or Frame Grabber.

I'm aware of it being a sagetv limitation, but it isn't a technical limitation. And transcoding is NOT a different ball of wax - at all - from compressing a raw image.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm aware of it being a sagetv limitation, but it isn't a technical limitation. And transcoding is NOT a different ball of wax - at all - from compressing a raw image.

It is when your CPU is your limitation factor even for a i7 with more then one HD device, then we need to start making use of Intel Quick Sync/ Nvidia NVENC/ AMD AMF/VCE.
But still the best way to go is with hardware x264 encoder in forum of a Add-On card PCIe, PCI and USB or Networked Attached Tuner.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by SHS

It is when your CPU is your limitation factor even for a i7 with more then one HD device, then we need to start making use of Intel Quick Sync/ Nvidia NVENC/ AMD AMF/VCE.
But still the best way to go is with hardware x264 encoder in forum of a Add-On card PCIe, PCI and USB or Networked Attached Tuner.

My point was that I am currently running all my recordings through ffmpeg in realtime, as they are being recorded. Not remuxing, this is actually decoding the MPEG-2 to a full frame, scaling to 720p (since most my sets are smaller flat panels anyway), and encoding to h.264. I am using a fast profile, but that still provides for results easily as good or better than an HD-PVR's encoding, and I'm doing this 5 at a time. This is not using quicksync, or any other hardware accelleration, because of the form of ffmpeg that openDCT has in it.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

My point was that I am currently running all my recordings through ffmpeg in realtime, as they are being recorded. Not remuxing, this is actually decoding the MPEG-2 to a full frame, scaling to 720p (since most my sets are smaller flat panels anyway), and encoding to h.264. I am using a fast profile, but that still provides for results easily as good or better than an HD-PVR's encoding, and I'm doing this 5 at a time. This is not using quicksync, or any other hardware accelleration, because of the form of ffmpeg that openDCT has in it.

Dedicated hardware should at the very least be easier on your electric bill, but I see what you're saying here.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Dedicated hardware should at the very least be easier on your electric bill, but I see what you're saying here.

No, of course hardware is going to be easier, and more efficient - i was just saying that the lack of hardware compression shouldn't be considered a reason for sage to NOT support these devices.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

No, of course hardware is going to be easier, and more efficient - i was just saying that the lack of hardware compression shouldn't be considered a reason for sage to NOT support these devices.

I think it's more accurate to state that lack of anyone with the skills/desire to add this feature is a good reason to not support these devices. SageTV is maintained by volunteers; anyone who has ever organized volunteer work knows that you're not going to get the same level of commitment as paid workers and it's unreasonable to expect it. I would love to see SageTV get to a point where something like this is as simple as Plex makes it look (i.e. their transcoding engine), but unless we get a sudden influx of dedicated programmers very interested in fixing this shortcoming, features like this will never arrive. You can say a lot of things shouldn't be, yet they are and they will be for the time being.

I personally don't see a lot of value in software encoding because it's inherently less predictable over fixed function hardware. You never know when that spike it going to hit your CPU that wrecks your recording at the worse possible time. I know other things and lead to similar or worse disasters, but it's a point of failure that doesn't need to exist. I think this could be added as a side-effect of someone upgrading the transcoding capabilities in SageTV (which I actually do have a desire to take a stab at), but I have no desire to take this specific kind of feature head on.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I think it's more accurate to state that lack of anyone with the skills/desire to add this feature is a good reason to not support these devices. SageTV is maintained by volunteers; anyone who has ever organized volunteer work knows that you're not going to get the same level of commitment as paid workers and it's unreasonable to expect it. I would love to see SageTV get to a point where something like this is as simple as Plex makes it look (i.e. their transcoding engine), but unless we get a sudden influx of dedicated programmers very interested in fixing this shortcoming, features like this will never arrive. You can say a lot of things shouldn't be, yet they are and they will be for the time being.

I personally don't see a lot of value in software encoding because it's inherently less predictable over fixed function hardware. You never know when that spike it going to hit your CPU that wrecks your recording at the worse possible time. I know other things and lead to similar or worse disasters, but it's a point of failure that doesn't need to exist. I think this could be added as a side-effect of someone upgrading the transcoding capabilities in SageTV (which I actually do have a desire to take a stab at), but I have no desire to take this specific kind of feature head on.

I do recall that there used to be some capability to do this early on in sage's history. I think there's even an MPEG-2 endocing filter in there somewhere for this (there were quite a few early SD capture cards that didn't have encoders, that DID work with sage). I'm not saying that that code could be salvaged and used, but it does point to the architecture likely being there at least a little.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I do recall that there used to be some capability to do this early on in sage's history. I think there's even an MPEG-2 endocing filter in there somewhere for this (there were quite a few early SD capture cards that didn't have encoders, that DID work with sage). I'm not saying that that code could be salvaged and used, but it does point to the architecture likely being there at least a little.

I think it used DivX and an AVI container. That takes me back a little.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I think it used DivX and an AVI container. That takes me back a little.

No kidding. Reminds me of my RealMagic Xcard I used to have connected to the TV. Was the coolest thing ever at the time.

It's crazy how much has changed since then.

[graywolf]

I remember when getting called in the middle of the night when On-Calll meant getting dressed, driving in, taking care of issue, driving back, getting undressed, trying to get back to sleep, hoping not to get another call before getting up to get to work at normal time