WDM Recorder using Software Compression

[aaronmd]

Is there any other MPEG-2 encoders, like that in PowerVCR, ATI Multimedia Center, or a free product out there?

[Kindred359]

FYI - I got this working last night. Here's my setup:

Card: Avermedia UltraTV PCI 300
SoftwareRecorder: v19
Encoders: Moonlight MPEG2 Encoder

Two Problems I encountered:

1) I had to put the DLShow.DLL in the GBPVR main directory - WDM Software Recorder would not showup under the list of sources with the DLL in the Plugin directory.

2) LiveTV Preview worked flawlessly right off the bat. However, after installing the moonlight encoders (trial version), I went to the configuration screen of WDM Software Recorder and tried to select Video and Audio encoders. However, to my dismay, the drop down boxes were empty. I jumped through hoops rebooting the box, uninstalling and reinstalling the encoders, and fiddling with the registry and the configure xml files. I tried installing SoftwareRecorder v15, but no luck. I reinstalled SoftwareRecorder v19 - viola! So, it seems that, for my setup atleast, SoftwareRecorder would not recognize the encoders as being available on the system if it was installed prior to the encoders.

This is fantastic - Thank you normanr! So, now that the card works, does anyone have any ideas on getting the UltraTV remote control to work with GB-PVR?

[normanr]

1) an alternative is to use the .config files. They make the .net framework look for dshow.dll in the plugin subfolder.

2) this shouldn't have happened, the list's are not cached or anything. I'm guessing that something else was causing an exception and those lists are filled last *shrug*.

[normanr]

tipstir: did you end up sending me the logs from your build 18+ testing?

bentheo: i still plan to fix the crossbar stuff in the config window, build 20 should have the fix. i'm just not sure when it'll get released.

Necro: there's not much more I can do to tweak quality besides what I've already done. Something that just crossed my mind is that with my card, if you enabled teletext then the quality is forced down by the drivers. So perhaps something like this is happening? Can you try disabling teletext and see if that helps. Does dScalar use the windows drivers or does it interface with the card directly. What quality do you get with GraphEdit?

[Necro]

I'll check with what you said. As for the teletext...not sure exactly what your refering to. I'm in america so we really only use the text signals sent along with the video information for closed captioning...that's about it. I dont have that turned on at all.

Dscaler does access the hardware directly. However, if I lower the resolution that Dscaler is using, I CAN get similar looking video in it. It's very strange.

That being said, I'm contemplating getting a 150 card soon so...we shall see. Seems the wife really liked the HTPC setup when I used it over the weekend when we watched some episodes of 'Lost'.

Lastly...I have no idea how to even begin to use Graphedit. If there are steps you could outline, I could do it/figure it out...but I've never messed with it at all.

Hrm. Kevl, what drivers are you using for your tuner card? Maybe it has something to do with the drivers being misconfigured or being handled wrong (though I'm using the generalized universal Btwincap drivers so I'm not sure if that could be it).

[Pioneer4x4]

I started following this thread when it first started, I did a quick read about the plugin/util. I would like to see if I can use it with the Hauppauge WINTVPVR-PCI. That is their first PVR card. It originally only shipped with VFW drivers, but there are beta WDM drivers. I have the card running in a Server 2000 computer. It has onboard mpeg2 encoding that works great with the VFW drivers, but I'm not sure about the WDM. Is there a chance that this can work? If so with or without the hardware encoder? I guess I need to play with graphedit to see what it available.

I have GBPVR running on my main XP machine with a PVR 150 card, and this will be on my 'test environment' computer.

[Kevl]

I have tried both the sweetspot WDM driver supplied with the card and also the general purpose BTWinCap driver. Have also tried the GNU BT8xxx driver.
All have the same problem.

Kev

[normanr]

Is there a chance that this can work? If so with or without the hardware encoder? I guess I need to play with graphedit to see what it available.

If it's got a hardware encoder, then it's more likely that it'll work with the 'Direct' source than the 'WDM' source. The WDM source currently expects uncompressed video from the card, where as the Direct source expects compressed video.

But yes as you say, play with GraphEdit and check what's around.

[Necro]

Just FYI, thanks for the attempts guys, I appreciate it much. I finally decided (after the wife said she wanted a tivo and tried to make me tape 8 different shows on 2 vcr's last thursday) to get the PVR150 (from newegg). So, sometime next week I should be posting like mad with all of my issues.

Big question though, would it be possible to use the hardware capture (if the quality issue can get resolved) to do a LiveTV viewing while the 150 is recording.

[Kevl]

necro

did you manage to fix the low res software card problem?

I'm really keen to get my sweetspot RGB card to work in GBPVR

Kev