WDM Recorder using Software Compression

[normanr]

um, those logs look like you havn't actually saved any settings for the capture device. how is this working at all?

[mpoling]

Ok, I must have sent the wrong ones. Here are all the logs.
Mike

[normanr]

I've forwarded the error to the Moonlight support guy I've chatted to before. We'll see what he says.

[normanr]

Pffft, apparently Moonlight is bankrupt. Elecard will be teaming up with MainConcept and (re)developing their MPEG products.

[angust63]

Hello all.

I thought I would let everyone know with my very first post that I was able to use this plug-in with my MSI built ATI Theater 550Pro. Everything appears to work just fine.

A couple of comments and observations . . .

First, I chose experiment with this option to record from my Digital Cable Box (over using the built-in MPEG Encoder the ATI Theater 550Pro uses) for the explicit reason of the ability to record with S-Video plus SPDIF-audio input into my Audigy2 Platinum EX. All other options (including the $69.99 I wasted on BTV) all seem to rely on using the ATI card's internal audio capture encoding. That means transferring audio through analog means from my HT Digital Processor into the ATI A/V breakout box. My PC sits 25' away from my HT audio setup. I was trying to avoid analog audio connections if I could.

So, with positive results achieved so far, kudos go out to normanr for what is obviously (judging from the size of this thread) a great amount of hard work and dedication.

My only negative observations so far appear to be simple visual quality issues. I notice some interlacing/sawtooth edges going on in different scenes. I presume that is the choice of software decoder I selected in GB-PVR's config utility. If so, I'll experiment some more with the different options later.

Until then, thanks again.

[normanr]

I was able to use this plug-in with my MSI built ATI Theater 550Pro. Everything appears to work just fine.

Great! I'll add your card to the list in the first post.

So, with positive results achieved so far, kudos go out to normanr for what is obviously (judging from the size of this thread) a great amount of hard work and dedication.

The thanks are much appreciated.

My only negative observations so far appear to be simple visual quality issues. I notice some interlacing/sawtooth edges going on in different scenes. I presume that is the choice of software decoder I selected in GB-PVR's config utility. If so, I'll experiment some more with the different options later.

I'm pretty sure these are interlacing issues. I know there's a config option to use ffdshow to deinterlace output, but I haven't tried using it or anything. I guess depending on the decoder you use, the quality will be drastically affected.

[mpoling]

So with Moonlight bankrupt, what are the new options for encoder/decoders?
How easy would it be to make the recorder able to write AVI files? Or even WMV?
At least those encoders are free.

[kreyg]

Yea, basically the requirement for the encoder package is that it must be able to take uncompressed video and audio, encode them to MPEG-2, mux them together, and output an MPEG-2 program stream. It must not write the output to file, because the output needs to go to GB-PVR's own file writing component that allows timeshifting to occur.

Yes... that is exactly what I'm seeing in GraphEdit. The filter is called "CyberLink MPEG Video Encoder" with "XForm In" and "XForm Out" pins. The "InterVideo Video Encoder" is pretty much the same.

I can connect the "Capture" pin from my "Conexant 2388x Video Capture" filter to "XForm In," my audio card to the "CyberLink Audio Encoder," send both of these to the "CyberLink MPEG Muxer" and appear to get an MPEG PS out the other end. This basically looks like the Moonlight graph.

So, how does the plugin determine which filters to make available?

Thanks.
Craig.

[normanr]

mpoling: the trick with using MPEG-2 is that the GB-PVR file writer requires it, which means that you can watch while recording. This makes timeshift mode work. I can't check - but I'm pretty sure that if you capture to MPEG-4 (eg: DivX, XviD) then timeshift doesn't work, and you can't watch a recording while it's in progress. I would love to swap to MPEG-4, but it requires that sub upgrades the filewriter first.

kreyg: The list displayed on the frontend is just filtered out with the RegEx in the config-recorders.xml file. So if you want it to display extra filters, just add to the RexEx setting. I'm pretty sure you can just separate substring with pipe's '|'. Alternatively just remove the MPEG2 and MPEG words, and you'll get a full list of all video and audio encoders.

[kreyg]

The list displayed on the frontend is just filtered out with the RegEx in the config-recorders.xml file. So if you want it to display extra filters, just add to the RexEx setting. I'm pretty sure you can just separate substring with pipe's '|'. Alternatively just remove the MPEG2 and MPEG words, and you'll get a full list of all video and audio encoders.

Cool, the CyberLink MPEG encoder seems to work great. The InterVideo encoder appears to go into timeshifting mode, but the OSD doesn't work. I'm using VMR9, not sure if that's related.

Thanks!
Craig.