can anyone help explain this data?

[glitch]

I'm recording 1 hour long shows and editing commercials to bring actual mpeg file time down to about 42 minutes. With my previous software (ATI software) a 1 hour show would be about 2.9 gigs in size. That was using 8000kbps (CBR if I remember correctly; CBR is what I use in gbpvr), DVD quality (29.97, 720x480), 96kbps 2 channel 48khz audio. After editing the file down to 42 minutes the size would drop just about 1 gigabyte.

For some reason using the same settings with gbpvr I don't get the same file settings. Unfortunately the file sizes are larger and therefore I may have issues with getting 2 edited mpeg files onto a single DVD like I could using ATI software. The files created using ATI are actually 1 hr 5 min due to padding that I added and yet they are still 600 megs smaller. The file size with gbpvr is about 3.7 gigs for a 1 hour unedited show and 2.5 gigs for a 42 min version of it. Two 2.5 gig files won't fit onto a single layer DVD. I've tried to modify audio settings and change to VBR for video and I still can't get the edited file size down below 2.5 gigs or so. Why would the gbpvr software create a bigger file (by 600 megs) while using the same settings as ATI? (Granted, for recording with gbpvr I have to use 192kbps for audio bitrate but then I reencode using 96kbps to match the other files I already have but 192 vs 96 shouldn't mean a 600 meg difference) Could the keyframes be spaced differently with gbpvr?

[HtV]

After editing the file down to 42 minutes the size would drop just about 1 gigabyte.

During editing you must have decreased the bitrate, noway a 42 mins show can be 1 gig with a 8000 kbps bitrate. if you still have one of those shows it would be nice to run them through Gspot ( http://gspot.headbands.com/ ), to see what actual bitrate and resolution they are.

[melearp]

I used to get similar symptoms as follows:

Record show with GBPVR - get, say, 3GB of recording
Pass recoding through VideoRedo with NO changes - recording down to 2GB

It turned out that I had on old MPEGMUX which obviously didn't do a good job of passing the data from the DVBT card down the chain to its eventual destination on disk. If you have an analogue card it's going to depend on just which piece of software is doing the encoding (or perhaps it's hardware encoding??). The quality of encoding and decoding does vary enourmously.

Once I had got a decent version of the MPEGMUX all my file sizes decreased and passing a file through VideoRedo (well worth the money) had negligible effect.

It might be that your ATI route and the GBPVR route are different for some reason on your system. This isn't the fault of GBPVR since it doesn't actually do the encoding.

[glitch]

To Htv, I never said that a file recorded using ATI software and edited for commercials would end up being 1 gigabyte in size. I said that its size would drop 1 gigabyte, not drop to 1 gigabyte.

[glitch]

To Melearp, since I'm using a Hauppauge card with gb-pvr and with the ATI software I was using an ATI card I guess it is the cards that are somehow different if neither software app does the actual encoding (otherwise what is the point in buying a card right?). Does a file that ends up bigger with a Hauppauge mean the Hauppauge card is better than an ATI card (at MPEG encoding at least) or is that not a good indicator?