Does NPVR have support for changing recording quality?

[liskinator]

i searched around and found that gbpvr has quality support( resolution bit rate). but i havent been able to find anything on NPVR.

if i want to record at 720x480 what would be a good bitrate(full quality).i have a 4;3 480i tv so i dont want to record in HD resolution, but still in 16:9 (i dont mind the black bars)

this project is great, originally had mythtv on ubuntu but i couldn't get svideo in the opensource drivers( i have a ati x1300) BUT this is way better of course :d

thanks for your help!!

[Reddwarf]

i searched around and found that gbpvr has quality support( resolution bit rate). but i havent been able to find anything on NPVR.

if i want to record at 720x480 what would be a good bitrate(full quality).i have a 4;3 480i tv so i dont want to record in HD resolution, but still in 16:9 (i mind the black bars)

this project is great, originally had mythtv on ubuntu but i couldn't get svideo in the opensource drivers( i have a ati x1300) BUT this is way better of course :d

thanks for your help!!

Are you recording analog or digital? What capture device and what OS?

[liskinator]

sorry for the lack of details, i have a ati x1300 svideo out, NPVR, windows xp sp3, hvr 1600, ATSC recording only, my tv (parents ) is an old 42in crt, max resolution of 480i.

so whats the ppoint of recording at 1080 when only 480i will be played back. basically i want to record over the air HD atsc in a lower resolution like 720x480.

i have installed gbpvr also so if thats the only way i can do that too. i dont mind

thanks

[martint123]

For digital broadcasts the datastream from the broadcaster gets written to disk as it is received. GBPVR had "quality" settings mainly because the most used (in the early days) was the PVR150 analogue tuner that had a hardware mpg compressor on-board and this is where the "quality" was changed.

With digital broadcasts, the only way would be a post processor using some external tool to change the bit rate and/or resolution.

[Reddwarf]

With digital broadcasts, the only way would be a post processor using some external tool to change the bit rate and/or resolution.

Like FFMEPG or MENCODER and recode the whole show to a lower resolution. However, this will take time, and unless you have problems watching it on the TV (the renderer will handle the resolution conversion on the fly) it's not worth the effort.

[liskinator]

well the computer cant stand HD, it studders, so what do you reccomend?

when im recording HD to the HDD it only uses less than 10% of the cpu. so, the HD content is recorded to the HDD, then a converter converts it as its still recording. is this possible?

also do any PVR programs that you know NPVR, gbpvr etc have support for automatically detecting commercials?

[Reddwarf]

Mencoder I beleive is the fastest to reduce the size, but a HD recording is pretty much data so I doubt it is able to convert on-the-fly, there is no option for it in NPVR eigter. For detecting commercials Comskip is the most used around here, work quite well also. Download and read the instructions, there should be some hints in the wiki about using it too.

[liskinator]

how is that "on-the-fly"?
NPVR records say 5 minutes of the show so far then starts the converting, and as long as the converter doesnt get ahead of the recording process it should work.

the 5 minutes of recorded video doesnt change after the whole show is recorded, so it wouldnt matter if i started converting before the whole show is done recording.

does that make sense to you?

edit: how long would it take to convert a hour long 1080 video to 480i with a 2.8ghz p4? long time?
when i looked up comskip i found the parrallelrun.bat(something like that) that runs programs "in parrallel". could i use that to start the converting after a certain time?

[Reddwarf]

how is that "on-the-fly"?
NPVR records say 5 minutes of the show so far then starts the converting, and as long as the converter doesnt get ahead of the recording process it should work.

the 5 minutes of recorded video doesnt change after the whole show is recorded, so it wouldnt matter if i started converting before the whole show is done recording.

does that make sense to you?

edit: how long would it take to convert a hour long 1080 video to 480i with a 2.8ghz p4? long time?
when i looked up comskip i found the parrallelrun.bat(something like that) that runs programs "in parrallel". could i use that to start the converting after a certain time?

With on-the-fly I mean in realtime. Yes I guess you could use ParalellProcessing.bat to start the conversion shortly after recording has started (I don't think anyone has ever tried that but in theory it should work), but I have no precise estimate on how long it would take on a 2.8 P4, but some hours is a pretty good guess.

[liskinator]

so what do you recommend me to do?

i cant watch HD without stutter, converting would take a while all USA broadcast is in HD