Recording TV show; what hardware and software needed?

[Lord Evermore]

Maybe not the right forum, but oh well.

The SciFi channel is running their Dune mini-series in December (awful nice birthday/Christmas present for me), and I'll be recording it on VHS, but I also want to record it on my computer for better quality and to be able to edit out the commercials easily.

So basically I want to find out what hardware and software would be best for me to do it. There are a couple of computer shows nearby between now and the airing of the series, so I've got time to try and get the stuff a little cheaper than retail or online, if somebody carries it at the shows, and to test it out ahead of time.

My computer:
Duron/700 (may be overclocked by then but I'll probably not get around to it)
256MB RAM
Creative Labs Annihilator 2 / GeForce 2 GTS

I'm guessing the video card won't make as huge a difference on this as it might otherwise, since it will depend on the CPU and memory to encode the video.

I'm not sure what the best format to use would be, either. DiVX/MPEG? ASF? I want decent quality, with the largest screen size I can get clearly (so I don't record like a 320x240 video window that has to be stretched to fill a 19" screen at 1024x768 or higher). This would I assume depend on the processor speed to be able to encode at a higher resolution. (Hard drive space for storing it isn't a problem.)

So I need to know what video input/decoder board I need to buy, and also what the best software to use would be. The price of the input/decoder board isn't terribly important, to a reasonable limit, if it's good quality; I don't want to go cheap and save money if the output will be crap (this means USB is a no-no). As for software, free or bundled with the hardware is preferable, if I can get good quality out of it. Evaluation versions or shareware would also be okay, as long as I can actually do what I need to do with it during the eval period (and if it's really nice, I might eventually pay for it). If there's really no good quality software available for free use or eval use (which I'd find hard to believe) then I might even pay right off for something.

Quality is paramount in this case, cost is a close second. I'm a big Dune fan, going on the 3rd reading I believe of the full chronicles.

 

[mosdef]

I suggest you get a quality TV card. Or you can explore TV capture devices (I believe there is one called Snappy!), but I don't know much about them.

-mosdef

 

[Praetor]

Well, here's what I've learned.

I went out and bought a WinTV+radio (model 401, I believe) for about $50. I didn't bother installing any of the bundled software. I downloaded the most current drivers for win2k and went from there. For basic capturing of video, the included vidcap32.exe works wonderfully. You can select the video compression you want (if any) which is handy, but as for audio, you're stuck with PCM, I believe. You can change that later on, if you want.

I started out capturing on a 13 gig ATA/33 drive with horrid results. (this is on a P3/500, mind you) Dropped framerates galore. When I bought my Cheetah 10k SCSI-LVD drive, all was good. Not a single dropped frame, even at 640x480x16b. Which basically translates to you having to have a fast enough hard drive to capture at the higher resolutions. Defragment it too! I've used Adobe Premiere and ULead's stuff, but I like Hauppage's little utility because it is so little and it doesn't put a lag on system resources that could be used for the capturing.

I don't know if you'll want to use compression so you can store it on your computer indefinately, but I'd recommend using either Microsoft's Media Encoder 4.1, the ever popular DiVX ;-) codec, or the MJPEG codec, my personal favorite for good looking compression on the fly. (a 300 mb avi went down to about 13 using MJPEG, to about 2-3 mb with DiVX/Microsoft)

You might want to head over to the Digital Digest for some links in converting the audio. I'd suggest getting the Radium-MP3 codec and VirtualDub to convert between formats.

Anyway. Mostly free stuff. And you'll have to figure out how to output it back to VHS (I don't know if your GF2 has video out), which is a snap.

Hope this helps!

 

[Lord Evermore]

I don't have video out on my card, but I'm not all that concerned with that. The VCR will be recording the show live in one room, and my computer will be recording it on another cable in my room. I just want to be able to keep a high quality digital copy on my computer rather than relying on crappy VHS.

Eventually I'll be putting it onto a CD. I may have to do it in 3 parts, since it's a 3 part 6 hour mini-series. I probably won't bother with any compression. However if I have to use on-the-fly compression in order to allow my hard drive to keep up, so be it, I'll just use the lowest compression I can. I want to keep the best quality I can at the highest resolution possible (though no higher than 640x480 probably, since that's about what a TV does anyway). If I can knock down the resolution slightly to get better quality, then I may go that route, since it will mean I can resize the picture during playback without it looking too horrible. I am using an ATA66 7200RPM IBM drive that does pretty well with everything else I do, but I won't know for sure until I test it. Which is why I'm looking into it ahead of time, so I can record other things as a test.

 

[Praetor]

Okay, I'd recommend using the MJPEG codec then. Things still look very good, with very little artifacting, and the file comes out realitively small. That'll do you good for on-the-fly compression. Then you can use VirtualDub to convert it to whatever other format you want to make it smaller. Even change the PCM audio to MP3 to cut down the file size even more.

Don't go with plain-jane AVI, you'll get huge files that way.

 

[Sohcan]

I definitely recommend Virtual Dub for your software needs...not only is it very feature rich, but it's also free. You can use it to directly capture to DivX/MPEG-4, then crop, edit out commericials, and compress to audio to MP3 or DivX audio. I definitely recommend DivX as your final video codec...it's easy to work with, and at 2 hours/CD, the video quality will be very close to that of DVD/MPEG-2.

A note about resolution: you might have trouble capturing at 640x480. I'm using one of my roomate's cheepo ATI TV Wonder-VE to record the widescreen B5 episodes on Sci-Fi, and I had to settle for 320x240. Even when recording to my 75GXP (granted it was across the network, but we do have a 100Base-T switch), I would average 25fps, but it would drop to 15fps or lower during high-motion scenes. At 320x240 I can capture at the full 29.97 fps without dropping any frames. This is probably the result of using on-the-fly DivX compression, so you'll probably want to get a capture card that can do on-the-fly MPEG or MJPEG compression (without Virtual Dub, the TV Wonder VE can only capture to raw video or a proprietary AVI codec).

 

[MWink]

I have used the STB TV PCI and the ATI TV Wonder VE. Both capture very well and can do up to 640X480@30FPS. If you want to capture at 640X480 you will have to have a fast hard disk and NOT use compression. 640X480@30FPS uncompressed requires a transfer rate of 18MB/sec. The only hard disk I have used that can do this is the Maxtor DM+40 series (the IBM 22GXP did not come close). If you want to compress on the fly at 640X480@30FPS you would need one hell of a CPU. I don't think any CPU currently available could do that. I would actually recommend capturing at 320X240. At that resolution there will be no interlacing effect. I have experimented with many different compressors and Intel Indeo (which ironically works best on AMD CPUs) seems to have the best quality and speed. Divx files are smaller but they take a lot longer to compress and don't look near as good. BTW, if you want a good editing program I highly recommend Asymetrix Digital Video Producer. Hope this helps.

 

[Sohcan]

<< Divx files are smaller but they take a lot longer to compress and don't look near as good >>

Some would argue that DivX/MPEG-4 is the best codec available. At higher bitrates, up to 6 megabits/sec, the quality is equal to that of DVD's/MPEG2, and at a smaller file size. I have a few 650MB DVD rips, and although the compression artifacts are noticeable in some instances, overall the quality is incredible considering it's ~10X smaller than its source.

 

[MWink]

I know it is supposed to be great but I am telling you what my experiences have been. Maybe it is just the one I am using.

Just give DIVX and Indeo a try and see which you like. After all you're the one who has to watch it.

 

[Praetor]

If you're doing it on the fly, DiVX and Microsoft's original MPEG-4 are probably going to be the worst choice for compression.

However, if you plan on converting your original file, compressed using whatever codec you originally chose, to DiVX, then you get a superb image. I've made DVD rips myself using DiVX, and it cannot be beat for picture quality. But I've also done on-the-fly recording using DiVX and it is pretty bad. At least, in comparison to the file I made by conversion.

 

[Kanly]

Do I die again in Sci-Fi's version?

 

[ArkAoss]

question, what will you be using for hardware video in??. Also to someone with divx expierience, I tried ripping a dvd, and it didnt look like it would work, can you copy a dvd to the hd and rip it later?? or compress it? can divx do 640x480 res? i have a udma 66 5400 rpm hd on its own copntroller, and the dvd is on another channel with a bigfoot drive, i should be able to get good speed from the dvd to the udma 66 right?, this is a great informative thread.

 

[TheNeck]

i have a ATI AIW 128 16meg PCI card and its awesome. but it only goes up to channel 124. so i cant record any channels over 124. and my sci fi channel is 160

 

[Praetor]

I saw some previews for SciFi's Dune, which made me ask, This isn't the original, is it? Bully for them for taking the chance in recreating a 'masterpiece.' And here's hoping they fit more of the book into the story.

Hey, does anyone want to rip it, edit it the commercials out, compress it, then distribute it? Anyone with a high speed connection? I'd do it, but I'm on a lowly 56k. Or maybe I'll just make VCD's out of it... Anyway, back on topic!

DiVX will handle 640x480 just fine. When you're doing an on-the-fly encoding job, however, that's when CPU speed will seriously come into a bigger factor. Assuming you've already got your HD speed problem taken care of. As to what you're doing when you &quot;rip&quot; a DVD; the initial step is removing the copyright protection, or CSS, from the original VOBs. Usually that's done by running various 'deCSS' programs that, as they copy the file to the HD the protection scheme is thereby removed. Leaving you with a set of very large, unprotected VOBs to convert.

You can, if you want, copy the VOBs in their original entirety to your HD and run the deCSS off of them there, but I'd suggest having a really big drive, as you'll be copying the encrypted files to unencrypted ones. The speed of your HD or controller isn't THAT important when you're ripping DVDs. You'll see an extra few minutes, possibly, but nothing on the scale of hours. It's the speed of your processor that will make all the difference when you're converting the originals.

 

[Caliber]

Hmm, lets say if i wanted to copy a show thats an hour long(x-files for an example), how much space would it take up uncompressed? Since it seems on the fly encoding isint really viable, outputing it to .AVI then encoding it to divx would be the best bet. I have a Hauppauge WinTV card btw(401 or 403 model)

 

[Lord Evermore]

So far I've seen a couple of possible hardware choices. The WinTV+FM is going for $100 retail, so hopefully I can get it cheaper at a show. It would be nice to have some alternatives to the few mentioned so far though, if there are any.

I may just buy a new SCSI hard drive just for this job. We'll see what happens with a test recording. I'm sure this drive could handle something short in a small resolution, but full size for 2 hours at a time might be a bit much (although if RAM gets cheap enough...store it straight to RAM and then save it...mmmm....)

 

[MWink]

Also remember there are limits to file sizes. I once recorded 2 6GB files and found I could not use either of them. There is something like a 4GB size limit.

 

[Auric]

W9x is limited to 2GB. There are ways to split the recording over multiple files like with AVI-IO. W2K has no such limitations.

 

[Praetor]

I think that Win2k and its NTFS filesystem has a 4gb limit. It has something to do with both the filesystem type and the way the codec was originally written. I'll see if I can't track down the source page for that info.

As for how big the file will be uncompressed... I think I ran a 60 second test run with each codec.

AVI=300 MB MJPEG=13 MB DiVX=~3 MB

Evermore, now that's dedication. Buying a HD just for Dune. Heheh.

 

[ArkAoss]

Lord evermore, why not grab a vcr or cable box have it grab channel 160 and out put to chan 3 or 4 for the ati. Praetor, does divx deCSS? maybe thats the prob i was having. I may have to shuffle a few things around in my system, run divx off one hd, and dvd and the storage drive to another,. Another question to any one, whats the best way (for free) to convert avi's to compressable mpg's?? i made some avi's with a stupid webcam, and thier already pretty crummy, but the files size of the avi's is sick. About ripping the Dune series and encoding it and hosting it, i have the vid in hardware to do it and the cablemodem, but i might not have the time to set it up, how long would it take to encode it with the system listed in my sig? I can add more ram on short notice, up to around 300 megs, but if ya think I should up the processor let me know

 

[Praetor]

Or, do what I do: I hooked up a cable box to my TV tuner (prol'ly the same one Evermore is looking at). That way I'm guaranteed to get all the channels, including pay-per-views. (hehe) The only caveat is that I can't really effectively use some of these TiVo type softwares. But for capturing stuff, it can't be beat. And I would recommend against first recording, then capturing off of the recording. Unless you have a really high-quality VCR and tape. You always lose something, y'know? If your first try at capturing it flops, then go to the recording you made. But that's just me.

And yes, ArkAoss, you have to deCSS it first. Check out the Digital Digest link I provided earlier for where to get deCSS type programs. I'd do a direct link, but the legality of such things is still up in the air.

As for how long it would take to actually encode it on your system... yikes. It all depends on what you decide to encode it at. If you want to stick with PCM audio or compress it to MP3. And then there's the actual recombination of the video and audio files and syncing them together. Then playing them back and hoping everything worked out right. It would probably take a full day's worth of work to get it done on your system. (Assuming you leave your computer on to crunch through it overnight) That's giving you enough time to go back and check and redo it if necessary.

I'll try and do a quick run through these next few days and report back my progress. See how long it takes and work through any bugs that might crop up.

Lord Evermore would face the least processing time of us all. I think I might bring myself an early Christmas this year, just for this project.

 

[ArkAoss]

I have other 3 other systems avialable to me each with about 500mhz processors, one is a p3 the other 2 are celery's, is their any way i could divy out the processing job to those, ya know distribute the computing?

 

[xtreme2k]

i dont know what but then my comp (700E at 818/117) can convert VCD MPEG1 into DivX at about 50fps using Virtual Dub

i am imaging this is even more stressing than encoding DivX real time as it is harder to decompress MPEG1 and Encode than just Take in the source and encode

am i correct?

Virtual Dub is one of the fastest DivX encoder i found, much faster than Flask, etc
http://www186.pair.com/vdub/index.html

 

[xtreme2k]

dont get a card that only supports MJPEG

from what i know
they are horrible to handle

i think there might be a 2G file size limit in win9x for AVI (not divX) file
i am not too sure on that

 

[xtreme2k]

by the way

encoding 640x480x32bit 30fps into DivX in realtime is IMPOSSIBLE with a Duron 700

i can tell ya that