"rollover" storage

[toomanyhandles]

Hi Sub-

The way my household uses the PVR is to ignore it for ages, then when we have time, catch up on all the things that recorded.
Even with drive space cheap, it would be really useful to have a capability to configure multiple recording shares, which would be used sequentially as the in-use share neared capacity.

Thanks for a great tool!

[pBS]

till then, try this...
any feedback appreciated..
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ing-drives

[Jakesty]

If you were to have all of your recordings just roll over to the next drive, configure them in a JBOD array. I personally wouldn't because I want them in a higher level of redundancy, so I use Raid 1 or Raid 5 in my arrays. But with JBOD you can just start daisy chaining all of your old drives (I happen to have quite a few), the problem is a failed drive can mean some or an entire loss of the volume. That's why...See below.

3TB drives are $169 or so, get a couple, put them in your system in JBOD or RAID 0 and you'll have plenty of storage. Instead of micromanaging where recordings go and how to control when they spill over to the next drive.

If you don't already, you could set up some kind of compression process too. Trying to find the right quality level can be challenging, but can save you substantial storage space.

[toomanyhandles]

till then, try this...
any feedback appreciated..
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ing-drives

Thanks! I really like the idea, but it will be a bit before I can test.

[jcjefferies]

If you don't already, you could set up some kind of compression process too. Trying to find the right quality level can be challenging, but can save you substantial storage space.

I have compression turned on for my NextPVR data drive and it is hardly worth bothering as the space saving was quite a bit less that 5%.

Chris

[Jakesty]

That's horrible. My typical compression is substantially higher. I compressed a 2 hr 4 min program from 8.39gb to 1.5gb. The quality is still very good. Obviously the higher your compression the more pixelization. So if you're getting only 5%, there's something wrong with your process. I'd suggest trying MCEBuddy or Mencorder.

[whurlston]

1: Having compression turned on on the recording drive is not the same as rencoding the video with a different compression method. Having compression turned on is basically the same as trying to put the video in a zip file. Zip files do not work well on already compressed files (like MPEG2/4 video). It works much better on uncompressed files like text.
2: US TV uses MPEG2 encoding which is not as efficient as MPEG4 which is used in other parts of the world (like where jcjefferies is).

[Jakesty]

@whurlston, I see what you mean. But DVB in Europe can also be MPEG2. I have never found an application which at the time of recording allows you to encode the transport stream into a different file format when saving, maybe the ones in Europe do, I'm not sure. Usually from what I've seen, they record in an MPEG2/TS file type format which you later run a process or third party app to actually compress the file.

But yes, if his files were compressed, putting them on a compressed drive would yield poor or no results and is highly discouraged.

[whurlston]

Sorry, #2 should have included "So space savings after transcoding will differ depending on the original stream compression".

I wasn't aware the EU DVB still used MPEG2... I'm slipping.

I have never found an application which at the time of recording allows you to encode the transport stream into a different file format when saving

Neither have I but it's not really something I've worried about.

[mvallevand]

I have never found an application which at the time of recording allows you to encode the transport stream into a different file format when saving, maybe the ones in Europe do, I'm not sure. Usually from what I've seen, they record in an MPEG2/TS file type format which you later run a process or third party app to actually compress the file.

While not quite the same, my HDPVR converts the HD analog output to h264/ac3 ts on the fly and the saving is tremendous, my OTA ATSC is 8 GB/hr vs the captured files are 2.5 GB/hr Purists will want the original broadcasts, but historically the old analog capture devices where doing the same thing, same except they save raw video frame grabs to another format like mpeg, wmv, or avi (even divx and mmjpeg) using hardware or software encoding.

Rather then application for me the idea capture device for QAM/ATSC would capture the stream and hardware encode it before it makes it to the PC. Saving to mp4 is a bit of a challenge to make it streamable,

Martin