Hauppauge HVR1600

[zaphod7501]

I spend quite a bit of time over at VideoReDo and there are a number of things that can happen and a number of tools to examine files. One occurrence is a station that literally changes resolution in the middle of a program (sometimes for commercials) Instead of putting the standard res material within the 16x9 frame they switch the stream which makes processing impossible until you seperate the two resolutions or cut off the offending portion (if it is at the very beginning of the file).

[sub]

I just remembered that we have a secure server on campus that I can put it on then send you an invite to it. What e-mail address would you prefer that sent to?

I got your file. When I go to the video library, I was able to transcode from 'TS to MPEG2'. The 175MB file quickly transcoded completely to a 164MB .mpg file. I had some problems playing the file though, so I made one small change to config.xml to force it to produce an MPEG2 contain file (instead of MPEG1, which it strangely seemed to use). This change was:

<AutoConvertTSCommand>-y -i "{SOURCE_FILE}" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f dvd "{DEST_FILE}"</AutoConvertTSCommand>

(see the additional "-f dvd")

With this it converted fine, to a 167MB file, which played fine for me, though there were a couple of brief stutters in the file. When I looked closer at these I saw there was a couple of "farts and pops" in your original source at these same times, which I can only guess a reception problems you might be having? These could be contributing to your difficulties transcoding.

For future reference, please dont use sample test files from episodes of shows I'm watching but havnt seen yet...

[whurlston]

For future reference, please dont use sample test files from episodes of shows I'm watching but havnt seen yet...

There is no emoticon for the amount of laughter I got from this.

[Cahill84]

Sorry Sub, I didn't even think about that.

1) So you think the stuttering is my reception not necessarily related to Ts mux?
2) Could something like this have affected my DVR-M$ conversions?

[sub]

1) So you think the stuttering is my reception not necessarily related to Ts mux?

Do you get these 'farts and pops' much? I could definitely see a few of them in the recording. If they're caused by reception problems, it could certainly be contributing to your problems.

2) Could something like this have affected my DVR-M$ conversions?

It may be part of it, but most ATSC users have problems converting DVR-MS files.

[Cahill84]

Yes, I get that throughout the entire show. What I find weird is I have 88% strength and 85-90% quality for that channel. I'm surpised to see that happen.

[sub]

I dont have much experience with ATSC (having never seen it in action myself), so cant really comment too much, but I sometimes wonder what does "85-90% quality" mean? Its obviously not perfect, and implies some packet loss. I'm sure a lot of it is recoverable (solomon-reed encoding etc), but how much flows through to missing/broken packets received downstream..

With ATSC, the vast majority of the data in the stream usually relates to the one high definition channel, so lost packets are most likely to be in the video data for the channel you're watching/recording. With DVB the stream usually carries about 9 channels standard definition channel, so lost packets are a lot less likely to affect the channel you're recording. I dont really know though, just musing.

Do you get flawless recordings with DVR-MS? ie no pops?

[Cahill84]

Signifigantly less. Not 100% perfect, but maybe a stutter every 2-4 minutes, sometimes longer. I have one recording that went like 25 minutes without it. It does better, but it's not perfect either.

[whurlston]

Thanks to Nick at Silicondust:

Status numbers for a channel:

"ss" is the signal strength expressed as a percentage. It is a measurement of the analog signal.

"snq" is the signal-to-noise quality - the signal-to-noise ratio expressed as a percentage (higher is better).

"seq" is the symbol error quality - it should read 100% indicating no digital errors.

Of course the abbreviations are for HDHomeRun users but the measurements are for all digital (ATSC/QAM) broadcasts.

Edit: Cahill84, your "Quality" is probably the snq. 85-90 is pretty good.

[sub]

Signifigantly less. Not 100% perfect, but maybe a stutter every 2-4 minutes, sometimes longer. I have one recording that went like 25 minutes without it. It does better, but it's not perfect either.

Might be worth finding out if this is similar to what others see, or whether they fare better.