Archiving TV shows to my hard disk using Radeon AIW

[wizz0bang]

I am interested in getting a setup that I can use to archive my favorite TV programs from my Dishnetwork system. I do a lot of taping as it is... but it occured to me, that with the advent of Mpeg4 compression, it was now viable to archive video to CD-R. Hi-Fi tapes are loss prone and about $1 each for good ones (the absolute cheapest I have ever seen them, usually around $2 each). 700mb Cd-r disks are now nearly free... I see 50 spindles of them for $15 or less routinely. I just bought one at office depot, no coasters from it yet (about 20 burned)!


Does anyone have experience with doing this? Here is my plan:
Buy a Duron 600mhz cpu and Abit Kt7 Raid, overclock it to 950mhz (or even 900, whatever I can get to work). This will replace my current celeron 333mhz on a P2l97, I need better speed for Mpeg4 compression. Then buy an ATI all-in-wonder Radeon. I want to capture in real-time to Mpeg2 (preserves up to 720 lines at 30fps). Then let my cpu run all night compressing the Mpeg2 down to Mpeg4 (according to Tom's hardware 11/1 is attainable with virtually no loss in quality). This should yeild about 110 minuetes of DVD quality on one 700mb CD-R. Since most shows aren't near DVD quality, I can probably get 3 43 minute episodes to one 700mb CDr. For shows like Dr. Who and the original Trek, I can likely compress them even further.

Personally, I'd love to have all of Babylon5 widescreen, all of Docotor who, Stargate SG-1, Highlander, all the star treks, and a lot of movie's off showtime. These would all fit in one case logic CD case! I have boxes of VHS tapes as it is... and they are not very high quality (even though I try to tape in SP Hi-Fi when I can). Then making copies for friends is easy... and it is lossless! I don't worry about magnetic media degrading over time. Then once I can afford a 100gb HD (near future?) I can have ALL my videos just a clik away.

Then immagine the trading possibilities! I'll email you episode 203-221 of B5 for epsiode 301-315! I need all of black adder, will trade all of red dwarf! Then when I get a two way sat system (this fall, fingers are crossed) I can just ftp my brains out... and hopefully others will be doing the same.

Basically what .mp3 did for audio, this will do for video. unfortunately I will have to automate it (recording fom Dishnetwork, mp4 compressing) or else it could be tedious.... and compressing one 43 minute television program will take a 950mhz duron several hours But the end result would be SWEET

There is one problem to this right now that I have ran into. There are several reports of AMD Cpus not being compatable with Mpeg2 or Mpeg1 real time capture. This boggles my mind... why aren't they? Can someone confirm and perhaps point me to a good article?

Also, it is possible to edit mpeg2 at all? I don't need to interject effects or titles... I just need to snip out the comercials

I'd appreciate your thoughts and advice. Will I just waste my time? Should I stick with video tapes?

Thanks!
Brad

 

[Vegito]

I have Dazzle and gonna do the same thing.

I have almost all Highlander, SOF, AiRWOLF, I'm gonna cut out commericals and make it straight play.

My thing says 1hour = 1 CD.

Currently using
P3 733
Choice of Matrox G400/CL TNT2 Ultra/Voodoo3 3K/Gulliemot 3D Prophet GeForce SDR
1GB RAM

I personally think that CD last longer then tape and you can cut these commerical out frame/frame...

 

[rebuilder]

wizzobang,
No answers from me,
I'm still learning this Mpeg4 stuff. I think youre right about this being a big thing. I want to download my digital video from camcorder and store it on cdr's rather than the expensive digital tapes. I'm willing to suffer some loss in the Mpeg4 but it doesn't sound like I will be losing much.

I haven't looked around but I'll bet you can find pirated Mpeg4 movies right now, not that I condone that, but that would be a sign that this will be huge.

 

[Fozzie]

If someone knows better then correct me, but my understanding is you can directly compress into MPEG4 without MPEG2 first. Not only would this be faster, but you'd get better quality. I don't have experience with the ATI software but I know you can with Virtual Dub. You'd certainly need a good fast CPU. Also MP3 seems to be more of a CPU hog then say WMA.

Otherwise if you find that it doesn't work on your system, I'd advise compressing into MJPEG instead of MPEG2. Only problem would be disc space but since your planning on compressing them & burning it to a CD it shouldn't be a problem.

Rgrds,

 

[Auric]

I've been thinking of doing the same thing for the same reasons -cheaper, no quality loss, take up less space, etc. Agree with Fozzie too.

 

[Whatchamacallit]

The only limitation to recording directly to mpeg-4 right now is
processor power. There isn't a fast enough processor yet to
do 640x480 resolution real time mpeg-4 capture. Real time software Mpeg-2 has just recently become possible.

 

[CQuinn]

One problem to face with automation is that AFAIK, the AIW cannot control
the reciever for the Dish. You will probably have to set up both and
automatic switch of the Dish to the channel you want, and set up the
AIW to record the incoming signal at that time.

After that, automating the conversion from MPEG2 to MPEG4 should be the
easy part. But, you'll probably want to keep the before and after to
compare visual quality of the finished files.

I did a quick deja search on the AMD issue, and it seems more like a
problem with the type of capture software used, or the motherboard drivers,
than a flaw in the Athlon. I have an old AIW Pro with a K6-III, and while
I can't capture to MPEG, I can convert from AVI to MPEG without too much
trouble.

Yes, it is possible to edit MPEG2, and taking out the commercials should
be fairly easy with most video editing softwares.

I'm planning on using a similar setup for short term video work, but I
will probably stick with video tapes overall, because I can output the
finished product back out to tape to watch on a regular TV.

 

[Mattster]

forcesho: you have almost all the old episodes of Airwolf?? Dayum. I thought I was the only one. I have about 6 or 7 tapes full (but used SLP-6 hours), so the quality has been lost somewhat.....

U seriously gonna convert them??

 

[PG]

Airwolf was awesome!! I wish I had those episodes. I heard they spent about a million per episode on that show. Now the actors get the money for TV shows so there's nothing left to spend on anything really cool. You get shows where people just sit around and try to be funny. The 80's were the best: Airwolf, A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, The Fall Guy, etc.

PG

 

[rebuilder]

Watch it PG, you're dating yourself!
Now I don't feel like the old kid on the block anymore!

I think I'm still in love with Daisy (she don't look half bad 20 years later!).

 

[TheNeck]

I have a duron 700 with an ati all in wonder 128, i just wanted to tell you that you cant capture mpeg1 or 2 with a duron, it doesnt support it, it only lets you capture in vcr1 and 2. i had a p3 500 and it let me do both.

 

[rebuilder]

Joblessone,
Are you saying the architecture of the duron chip won't allow this as opposed to the PIII architecture? Just curious what you mean?

Is this documented anywhere?

I'm not arguing, just trying to learn a little. I have the Duron 600 cranked up to 900 with the KT7 and was going to try this mpeg4 stuff whenever I got my act together.

 

[LocutusX]

MPEG4 actually yields worse quality than MPEG2, as least if you are using any of the Micro$oft codecs (and you most likely will be). During scenes with no motion, the quality is almost the same as MPEG2, but throw in a little bit of action and all hell breaks lose. MPEG4 has less resistance to artifacts caused by high motion than MPEG1. But that's a small price to pay for the amazing space savings.

Anyways, people have been "archiving" TV shows and distributing them via Web and IRC, for the past year or so. You can fit a ST:TNG episode into 85mb using DivX video @ 320x240x25fps & MP3 Audio @ 96Kbps, and it looks about the same as VHS in SLP mode.

I have an Asus V6800 Dlx and recently discovered how sh!tty the video capture features on it are. For starters, to capture at full resolution/full frame rate you need to be using Win98, using one of Asus' older display adapters (5.33A and before only). Trying to capture at 704x480x30fps in Win2K gives about 70% dropped frames. Even if you do succeed in getting full screen capture to work, the amount of space it takes up is about 1.5gigs per 10 minutes. Ridiculous. And the quality is pretty bad to boot since it uses ASUS own codec; doesn't even come close to what a Matrox or ATI unit is capable of with on-board hardware MPEG1/2 (or something similar).

 

[Jugernot]

I have to agree that MPEG4 isn't all its cracked up to be. I tried encoding low motion scenes from the Matrix the other day with MPEG4 using Toms Settings. It looked like crap! MPEG4 can't handle motion very well because of it compression scheme.

If I were, I'd try encoding a small clip with your computer now just to see what the quality is like before you spend all that money!

 

[Hulk]

I have an AIW 128 and a PIII 550e. I can do full frame high res capture with the motion compensation slider at about 8 while retaining system stability. I would like to see how much better the MPEG II capture would be with the MC slider pegged at 20. I'll need a faster processor to do that though.

In my opinion no software based real-time compression scheme will do the job for archiving video at this point in time. My PIII550e will compress high quality video at around 3fps. I would need approximately a 5500MHz processor! Of course better video hardware and more efficiently coded software could make this a reality in the near future. Maybe 1500 - 2000Mhz processors will be able to do it.

Here are some of my experiences:

Matrox Marvel G400 or other MJPEG compression schemes: Don't compress to MJPEG and then to MPEG II or Divx, results aren't that good. The JPEG compression of MJPEG is not suited for further compression.

MPEG II AIW capture and then further compression. Not good either. The AIW raw MPEG II capture is okay but further compression makes it look not so good. This could be better with the motion compensation slider higher (as I discussed above) but at this point I don't know.

The best method for archiving is to use a lossless compression like huffyuv. avi_io can do full frame lossless capture using this compression. Files are huge but then can be compressed to Divx or MPEG II (using TMPGEnc) with really good results.

Just a note. If your final format will be medium res (3x2) then you can compress MJPEG or MPEG II realtime and further compress with decent results.