Newb Question: Whats with all the Record Quality Settings?

[GStiles]

Forgive me for asking this. I know there is no simple answer to this question.

However, here is what I would like to know. I am new to STV. I see how I can adjust the record rates in terms of the bps, but that doesn't mean a lot to me right now.

Does anybody out there have recommendations or rules of thumb as to what bitrates/quality settings they normally use? I just need to make sense of all this new jargon

For now I am mostly recording kids shows that will be burned onto a DVD. I am not currently playing back my recorded files on anything other than my PC monitor. I'm looking for a good balance between DVD quality (once burned) and space (both for on the DVD and on my harddrive).

I was hoping somebody might share their experiences to perhaps direct me to a thread/article that discusses "recording quality for dummies". I didn't see anything like this in the FAQ and I'm sure everybody has questions like this when just starting out.

Thanks

[Cayars]

Try using DVD Extra Long play and see if the quality is good enough for you. If not then try the DVD Long play and see if this quality is good enough for you. If not then try the DVD Standard which should be good enough for you.

Basically, you want to choose a setting that is good enough for your setup without waisting extra space on the recording. Each progressive recording quality as listed above will use more and more HDD space.

That's a nutshell view but it should help you getting started.

[kny3twalker]

use one of the dvd qualities then
dvd long play or extended long play should be fine for cartoons
dvd standard for live action

[korben_dallas]

Which capture card/box do you have? I have the Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U.

For my 2 or 3 favorite shows, I use MPEG-2 Max Quality. That usually comes out to 2GB - 2.5GB per hour.

If you think the show is something you will want to burn to DVD-Video, then those guys are right.. use one of the DVD profiles.

If you think you may want a portable video, then most of the Long or Extended profiles have lower resolution suitable for portability.

[salsbst]

I use DVD Extra Long Play for everthing except sports, for which I use MPEG2 Max Quality.

[Cayars]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Which capture card/box do you have? I have the Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U.

For my 2 or 3 favorite shows, I use MPEG-2 Max Quality. That usually comes out to 2GB - 2.5GB per hour.

If you think the show is something you will want to burn to DVD-Video, then those guys are right.. use one of the DVD profiles.

If you think you may want a portable video, then most of the Long or Extended profiles have lower resolution suitable for portability.

Max quality should be 2.5-3 times higher then that.

[GStiles]

Thanks for all the input folks.

Since the question was asked, I am using a PVR150 MCE card with Sage 2.1 (and I just installed Cayars latest mod )

[Cayars]

Soon to be next to latest as I'll be releasing an update around 11ish tonight.

[silkshadow]

Actually, I've had a question about this for a long time. I think its about time I asked it . Is there any reason to use 'best' or 'great' quality with a SD TV? My 2nd TV is a 32' flat picture tube SD tv. I do record sports and my favorite shows in best (mostly for my DLP TV with the client) but, for shows I only plan to watch on the SD tv, should I even bother with best? What is the max quality I should use for the SD TV? Thanks!

[Cayars]

Only YOUR EYEs can tell you the answer to that question. You only need the quality to be as good as YOUR EYEs determine it needs to be. For normal shows/movies DVD Extra Long Play is probably good. Sports on the other hand are better recorded at a higher rate and I'd say MAX is good if your system handles it well.

[silkshadow]

Thanks Cayars! I was thinging that best/great would be recording in a higher resolution than a SD TV could handle so would be a waste of space.

[korben_dallas]

Nah. I use Max Quality MPEG-2 for my favorite shows, and I watch them on a standard non-flat tv. They look pretty good w/ Nvidia DVD/MPEG-2 codec.

[silkshadow]

I am doing the same korban, but its requiring me to add yet another HD to my rig .

[mdmint]

I've found it not only depends on the content being recorded and type display but also size of display. The larger the display the higher the record quality you'll want. I see things "off" on the Tosh 55" that I don't on my 19" monitor. I've played with different qualities and have pretty much settled in on DVD Standard Q for most everything except sports, then Mpeg2 Max Q. BTW, Mpeg2 Max Q more like 5GB/hr, not 2 to 2.5. That would be for a 1/2hr show.

[lyberty]

Originally Posted by GStiles

I know there is no simple answer to this question.
. . . Does anybody out there have recommendations or rules of thumb as to what bitrates/quality settings they normally use? . . . "recording quality for dummies".

I would like to suggest that there is a simple answer to this question.

To choose which recording quality you should select, assume you want the highest quality (highest bits per second and the highest resolution).
Then it is just a matter of determining how much video you want to fit onto your hard drive. In other words, balancing the size of the file
against the quality of the file.

[Disclaimer: I use a Haupaugge capture card, so I don't know if this works differently for other capture cards. Concepts should
still be the same though.]

For example, I use "DVD Standard", "DVD Long Play", or "DVD Extra Long Play" (because I'd like to transfer the video to DVDs eventually).
This is how much hard drive space is taken on my system for each of these for 30 minutes of video and for 60 minutes of video:

Quality Level............30 minutes....60 minutes
DVD Standard ............. 1,525 MB.... 3,050 MB
DVD Long Play .............1,178 MB.... 2,144 MB
DVD Extra Long Play .... 788 MB..... 1,576 MB

These are just examples, of course, and your values will vary (especially for variable bit rate recording: more movement
or complexity means a higher bit rate is needed, and this means a bigger file). But at least this gives you something to work with.
[In my case, I'm using a PVR-150, and the audio is encoded as MP2.]

If you do the math (just remember that 1 GB = 1,024 MB), you can figure out about how much tv you'll be able to fit into
the free space left on your hard drive. For example, if you have 20 GB [20,480 MB] free , you'll be able to fit about:

6.7 hours of DVD Standard Video
9.5 hours of DVD Long Play Video
13 hours of DVD Extra Long Play Video

And if you want more video to fit, you can try the other options. But you'll eventually get to some level where you think "this recording is awful",
and then you know you'll need a higher quality setting.
In my limited experience, I found SVCD quality was just barely okay for shows without a lot of movement,
but in general I want the DVD quality levels so I don't get a lot of digital artifacts.

EXTRA CREDIT:

If you want the full details on the other SageTV settings, you should check out this file:
http://www.sage.tv/2_papers/HPquality.txt
It tells you what the values in your "Sage.properties" file means (and how to make custom quality settings).
The "Sage.properties" file is in your SageTV directory, and it can be opened with a text editor (like Notepad).
In it, you can find out what the quality settings are (for example, "Best" means 6,000,000 bits per second Constant Bit Rate [CBR]).

Just make sure to make a copy of the "Sage.properties" file before you open it, so that if you accidently change something, you
can replace the file with your backup file.

[silkshadow]

Wow lyberty, thanks for the great and detailed info!

[orionhunter34]

My Method: Commercial Anticipation Method (CAM)

a) tv shows have commercials
b) if you edit out the commercials you will have a smaller file. (mpeg-vcr is a good editor for this).
c) By anticipating how many commericals there will be you can set the recording quality according to the desired size of the de-commercialized file.
d) The desire file size is usually to fit on DVD.
e) Once you have determined your rates you get the most bang for the buck (most quality for least storage to fit on DVD).

Here is what I have found:

MPEG-MAX (12000000 bps) - creates files around 5.6 GB/h. On most tv stations after editing out all commercials, credits, etc. the file will fit a 1h tv show on a standard "4.7GB" (actually 4.3 GB) DVD.

BEST (6000000 bps) - exactly half of MPEG-MAX bit rate. However files produced are slightly more than half the size. So it is not that useful unless you have a lot of commercials.

Custom Best (5825000 bps)- This is a custom quality recording rate I set up Sage.properties. It is better at creating half the file sizes of MPEG-MAX. Thus, after editing the commericals I can fit 2 one hour tv shows on a DVD. This is the one I use the most now. And I can find little difference in picture quality between it and MPEG-MAX for most tv. It is still also in experimental stages.

[zz5]

With Best, you can fit 96 minutes onto a DVD. So that's plenty of space for 2 hours worth of video after removing the commercials. For DVD Standard Play you can fit around 90 minutes, 30 seconds onto a DVD. That's enough space too because everything has at least 15 minutes of commercials per hour.

There's a lot of blank header space in the MPEG files the Hauppauge cards produce. This extra space is removed when you make a DVD.

[orionhunter34]

How much difference does the header space make? I don't usually convert mine to DVD format, just remove the commercials and burn to disk. So, I'm not sure if I'm benefiting from that. I don't really like making the dvd's because it produces a whole bunch of files and I don't care to spend time making menus. I suppose you could put the show information in the menu as a background picture if you wanted. My DVD player will play mpegs so it is better for me to leave as mpeg.

[zz5]

There's around 8% header space that can be removed.