AVerTV HD DVR: New PCIe HD Capture Card

it relies on the cpu to do the encoding. also, it (most likely) will not support hdcp.

I'm not sure if this would make for a useful capture device for a dvr, unlike the hd-pvr due to the lack of hw encoding.

wow. and around a hundred bucks, i think ill look for one and give it a go in my new build. ;-)

and the software ?

if only the software for such products were half as good as the hardware.

***AVerTV HD DVR is designed not to capture, convert or transmit video or audio from any Copyright Protected sources or devices (HDCP devices & Macro Vision protected content)***

I am having trouble with with the card. When I put the recorded footage into Sony Vegas the video speeds up and the sound is off. Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks.

Look sonny boy, dont post using my account!!!!!!!

This is off the machinima.com forum. It discusses PROBLEMS with the Hoggpogg box or whatever the hell its called! Just give it some time for avermedia to work out some of the encoding issues and your video/audio sync problems should disappear. HD gameplay capture is a resource PIG!!

"I use the exact same equipment. Here's what you do: the chances are you recorded on a high bitrate, right? If so, that means that you'll practically NEVER get a perfect playback within the program. You're probably thinking, "That doesn't help!" Well.... oh yeah, it doesn't help. Crap. But, the best bet is to just play things about 10 seconds at a time, pause it, wait for your computer to keep up, play it again, and keep doing it. Yeah, it sucks, but that's what I do.

I think this is what you mean. If you want to review it and add final touches, just render it at a really low bitrate and frame rate and you'll get a decent playback. Hope this helps... somewhat..."

that is meaningless gibberish... please try to get a grip on reality.

there are two very important things you want here for recording: codecs & bitrate.

for the latter,Profile
Level
Video Size
Entropy Mode
Video Bitrate
Audio Sample Rate
Audio Bitrate

what's needed here are some recorded samples... has anyone uploaded any files? are there any reviews of this unit online?

"AVerTV HD DVR does not support Windows Media Center. We mentioned in our description that we include AVer MediaCenter for capturing video."
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815100049

I note the following from the cards user manual see following link:

That HDCP or DMA protectred analog content is not supported.
And that no support for MS Media Center is provided, only the Aver software application is supported.

http://www.avermedia-usa.com/AVerTV/...90909_ver5.pdf

Agreed, that was jibberish, Im well aware of what needs to be done, but Im trying to get the message across to a 14yr old and tell him that there is no way he's going to capture his gameplay on the fly at 1920x1080 without very high end gear. Just a note though h264 at 720x480 seems very stable and we'll try to get some sample stuff uploaded. Any word on a firmware update yet for the avermedia card??

yea, VERY high end gear as HDMI is uncompressed. You'll either need stupid fast I/O and space, or CPU to compress the video.

And the PS3 puts out HDCP full time. The 360 doesn't though.

Can anyone who has tried this on the component input tell us how much of a CPU hit the software encoding gives you? Please include your system specs.

Also, what about the stability?

Oh yeah, when encoding 720p or 1080i...

If memory serves, I thought software based capture cards went out of favor about 7 years ago.

That, coupled with no support for 5.1 audio would lead me to think that this has almost no attraction for a HTPC application...

-Suntan

Totally agree with Suntan. The only people I have seen that showed any interest in this card are folks interested in recording HD output from games be it xbox360 or PS3. Other than that I don't see much use for it.

Yes, but in the last 7 years, CPU power, PCI bus speed, memory, etc have increased exponentially... to the point where encoding SD material is a piece of cake. As this continues, software encoding of HD will no longer be an issue.

I currently own a Hauppauge HD PVR, but for me the stability has resulted in a very low WAF. I am just looking for something more stable but not sure if my E5200 dual-core can handle it.

If WAF is the main driving force then you definately want to stay away from this card. The ONLY software that supports it is the bundled software called Aver MediaCenter. It doesn't work in Windows Media Center, SageTV, BeyondTV and any other established front end.

the 64,000 question...

what is the maximum bitrate it will allow you to encode 720/1080 with mpeg-2 or h.264? the hauppauge limits you to 13.5 Mb/s. any bitrate limitation on this one? do you have the option of cbr and vbr?

also, does the included dongle work with additional devices other than the aver? in other words, can I for instance take the component output from say, a dvr, and run it through the dongle to feed a puter moniter or a tv that has hdmi in?

The 720p or 1080i Mpeg2 or H.264 is allready and compressed and encoded when you receive it so you have not control over bitrate. The bitrate setting tuner cards only appplied to the encoding that was done by encoder chip on the analog tuner cards.

i already have an aver hybrid volar max atsc/qam usb stick tuner, and i am aware that when i record digital channels it just dumps the mpeg-2 program streams from my cable provider onto my hard drive. no re-encoding necessary. that only works for unscrambled channels.

i'm talking about when i want to record from the component out on my dvr, to save encrypted hd content stored on the dvr. when you record using component in on the aver, which is analog, surely some re-encoding must take place. on the hauppauge you are limited to 13.5 Mb/s. i want to know what is the bitrate limitation (if any) on the aver.

i skimmed the manual and it showed a screenshot of recording with mpeg-2, and showed a bitrate of 15000. i want to know what is the maximum you can use for both mpeg-2 and h.264, when you re-encode the hd analog signal 720/1080 via component.

After more investigation I found the crappy AVer software only encodes with a max bitrate of 15000 using MPEG-2 video. It offers H.264 as well, but I think H.264 encoding is restricted to SD resolutions, and the bitrate is far too low for any decent quality. So capturing HD with the included AVer software seems to be not very promising.

I noticed the AVer HD DVR is on sale at the Egg and the Tiger now, and the price is real attractive after a $10 rebate (free shipping + no tax).

Well after doing some more digging, I found that some gamers are saying that they can use a shareware software called FRAPS to record their HD game play with the AVer card. I had never heard of FRAPS so I looked it up.

It appears that FRAPS is designed for high-end sophisticated video capture--the latest version even allows you to capture lossless uncompressed RGB (if you have large enough and fast enough drives). It also seems to offer a "near-lossless" encode which uses a very high bitrate to maintain max quality, but just enough compression that you don't have to worry about your disks not being fast enough to write the massive amounts of data.

Here is a YouTube clip where a fellow claims he can use FRAPS to capture rather than using the crappy bit-rate limiting software AVer provides. He claims you can capture with very HQ if you use a 3rd party external capture software.

Test and Review of the Avermedia Aver HD PVR - HDMI Capture Card - 1280 x 720
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieiuQsN45FI

In the comments section he also mentions that he successfully used Cyberlink's Powerdirector 8 software to capture at 25000 bitrate, with much better results than the 15000 limit on the AVer software.

So it appears that 3rd party external software encoders can be used with the AVer PCI-e card.

Now, I know that some people are still not impressed because this card only does 2 channel stereo. But for the videophiles out there that demand the best quality, why couldn't you just use this cheap AVer card to do uncompressed (or very little compressed) video captures, and then also capture the 5.1 surround sound from your set-top box programs with the HD PVR 1212, and then simply strip out (de-mux) the audio from the Hauppauge capture and re-mux it back into the HQ video capture from the AVer card?

Sure, you might have to do a bit of minor snipping here or there, and you might have to delay or advance the audio a bit to get it to sync up, but it doesn't seem like it would be insurmountable to get very HQ video from the AVer (using FRAPS or something like this), mated with 5.1 audio from the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212.

What do y'all think? Any holes in this plan? I am seriously thinking of getting this AVer card now that I know you are not stuck using the included AVer encoding software.

if you are going though the expense and effort to buy a hd-pvr, why not just use that and forget the aver card? I can't see how the possibly marginal increase in pq would be worth the huge hassle of using the aver card.

The 5.1 surround sound is not all that important to me, personally. Maximum video quality is important to me, however. I am simply suggesting that this card could be useful for those who have already forked over the dough for the Hauppauge 1212. Another $69.99 to be able to capture with archival quality might be worth it for some. It offers greater flexibility. One could capture uncompressed RGB and then later at their leisure re-encode to whatever format or bitrate they chose, to exactly fit on a dual-layer DVD-R or to get maximum quality with reasonable file sizes. It always bothered me that the Hauppauge is limited to 13.5 Mb/s and that because it is encoding on the fly, and not doing a 2 or 3 pass encode, that quality will suffer. Uncompressed RGB and then a leisurely encode to H.264 sounds like a lot better quality to me, especially for those who have large projectors and can see the difference on a 100 inch+ screen.

I want to know if I can just use the break-out cable without the card. That alone would be worth $20 to me. Is this possible? I am skeptical. I want to be able to take the component out from my set-top box and feed it to one of my PC monitors which doesn't have component in, but does have HDMI.

Could I take the component outputs from my Comcast HD DVR, feed them into the AVer break-out cable that comes with this, and then plug the HDMI end into my PC monitor? That would be an easy way to get HD from your set-top box onto a PC monitor that does not have component in.

First Impression Review:

The card arrived yesterday evening and it was a snap to install in my PC. When I plugged in both the HDMI and the Component out from my Comcast Motorola HD DVR (DCH-3416) into the AVer capture card, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had no trouble recording with either HDMI or Component, using the supplied AVerMedia Center software. I figured the HDMI in wouldn't work, because of HDCP on the set-top box or something.

My AMD quad didn't break much of a sweat when recording with the supplied AVer software. I could watch full-screen while recording at the same time without issue. However, I don't want to be tied to using the AVer software because you are limited to 15000 (15 Mb/s) bitrate with MPEG-2. The recording quality is not that bad when using the maximum bitrate of 15000 and you are recording a program like a documentary or a talk-show or something. There's not a lot of motion with that type of content, and therefore it's easy to encode. Games on the other hand feature high FPS and lots of motion so I could see how the 15000 MPEG-2 won't cut it for HQ recording of games and fast-action sports. I dropped a couple recordings on a thumb-drive and plugged it into my Asus O!Play media player, and it had no trouble playing back the recorded .mpg file. I didn't notice any A/V sync issues. The Max bitrate for audio is 384 Kbps stereo.

Next I tried FRAPS, since it can do near visually lossless compression. It captures (grabs frames) with excellent quality, but unfortunately, even when I OC'd my AMD quad-core from 2.8 --> 3.4 Ghz, I would still get lots of dropped frames. I couldn't do 720p @ 60 FPS. Now, my PC (XP SP3) is really clogged right now and my drive is badly in need of defragging, so that isn't helping matters. I also had to rob some RAM out of it for another build, so I'm only running 2GB of RAM, and sharing 256MB of it with my onboard ATI HD3300 video (IGP). Even with a clean install and more RAM, I suspect I still will not be able to get a full 1080i30 or 720p60 without dropping some frames. I do have another video card laying around that I could throw in and do a hybrid crossfire, but I haven't gotten around to it or upgrading to Win7.

So next I downloaded a trial of Cyberlink Power Director 8, because that allows you to encode MPEG-2 with a bitrate of 25000, which should be sufficient for excellent quality. No go. The software must honor the macrovision or whatever the analog copy-protection is coming out of my Moto box, because it would display the video in the preview screen live, but when I clicked on the record button, I would get all kinds of lines and green...obvious copy protection. When I changed the settings to record in SD, the software recorded just fine, so there is obviously some copy protection flag being recognized in the Cyberlink software. The fellow who successively used Power Director 8 at a bitrate of 25000 must have been using a game system that does not output analog copy-protection. One could get around this analog copy protection by purchasing an HD Fury, but those are a bit expensive.

Things would be much more simple if those clowns at AVerMedia would simply allow you to encode MPEG-2 at bitrates higher than 15000. Recording at 15000 didn't seem to present any problems for my AMD, even when not overclocked, and running at the stock 2.8 Ghz. I don't think there is any reason why my system couldn't encode at 25000 or even 38000 if they would simply enable this option.

In summary, I see a diamond in the rough with this card. I just need to find an inexpensive (or free) software encoding program that works with this capture card.

I am using the PIP function right now as I type this to display HDTV from my DVR on my PC. It's nice that you can re-size the PIP to any window size, and also move it freely to any portion of the screen you choose. It's not much different than using AVer MediaCenter with one of their OTA/QAM tuners, but with the added benefit of being able to also watch encrypted channels or stuff stored on the DVR in PIP or full-screen. It also seems much more stable than my AVer Hybrid Volar Max OTA/QAM/NTSC USB tuner, since the DVR is doing the tuning and just handing it off digitally to the AVer card.

Sorry, but I don't have a game system such as a PS3, X-Box, or Wii to test this card with. I got it mostly for transferring encrypted HD channels off my DVR, and also HDTV (including encrypted channels) in a PIP window on my PC is nice as well.

Only if one's drives can sustain transfers of about 100Mbps or more: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=11179892

I first tried using FRAPS without the full RGB uncompressed setting. It appears that you only have two options. Mild compression (large filesize) and uncompressed (huge filesize). You can adjust the frame rate, and can adjust the resolution to half-size, but that's about it.

I am getting about 300-400 MB per 30 seconds of recording, so that would mean around 42 gigs per hour. Perhaps my disks have a problem writing 300-400 MB in 30 seconds...especially since they are fragmented, and I need to free up some space before I defrag.

Come to think about, I think I have a couple of eco green drives in there right now, which aren't that fast. A 1 TB and a 750 GB. I had a reasonably fast 7200 RPM 32MB cache Seagate drive at one time, but I robbed that drive out of this PC to do another build.