[bennynihon]

I was curious if anyone has a setup that uses PVR software to record into some lossless format such as Huffyuv, and then encodes the captured material to MPEG2 or Xvid at a later time.


Ideally I'd like to be able to use a software MPEG2 encoder, such as Cinemacraft Encoder, and an MPEG4 based encoder such as Xvid. Thing is, encoding with both in realtime is probably not feasible, so I'd need to capture it with some other format, such as Huffyuv. But after the PVR software captures the TV program, it'd be nice to have the software encoders automatically begin encoding during free-time (when no capturing is being done) in the background. Is this possible? Thank you.

 

[zothen]

I used to do this using ShowShifter and it worked quite well. I used DivX at the time but you should be able to use most any DirectShow encoder codec.

 

[john12345]

A nice bonus you get with ShowShifter is PicMjpeg. It's not lossless but it's a good capture codec for the times when you don't need lossless quality.

 

[Scotty L]

I capture to HuffYUV + 16/44 PCM and it's not pretty on the HD space. I usually later convert to 2-pass Xvid or WM9.


Huffyuv unfortunately isn't ideal for a full-on PVR. You can use single-pass Xvid or maybe even mpeg-2 if your CPU is fast enough, especially if you set the encoder options for speed rather than quality. Try it and see how you like it.

 

[bennynihon]

Scotty,


I'm assuming you're not using it for PVR? I've used Huffyuv in the past for just capturing video here and there. I'm curious what software you're using.


Cinemacraft encoder is largely considered the best software MPEG2 encoder, and the reason I am interested in this "Huffyuv capture and encode later" approach is that I'm concerned of the hardware based PVR cards MPEG2 encoding. I'm not sure it would be comparable to Cinemacraft Encoder for archiving any shows that the PVR software caught.


Can anyone comment on the quality of the Hardware MPEG2 encoders versus say Cinemacraft Encoder? thanks.

 

[Scotty L]

Most of the Hauppauge PVR users seem to love their card and let's be honest, it's just NTSC anyway.


I'm using a Flyvideo 2000 and Fly2000 TV software. I don't PVR, just record as I watch. I've tried the other capture software (iuVCR, Virtual VCR, FlyDS) but that's the one that works best with the card, and is highly customizable to boot. Problem is the developer is Russian and his site is soooo slow.

http://auzol.narod.ru/index_e.html

 

[bennynihon]

I too own the Flyvideo 2k, and wanted to continue to use it, as it's been regarded as the best quality video capture card out there (not to mention that I'd like to save myself some money and avoid having to purchase another card). Thanks for the tips.