Realtime compression

Kurt_ · Post by **Kurt_** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:16 am

hi its tim, logged on as kurt (thats what he gets for saving his pasowrd, im lazy)

anyways, im trying to get a PVR set up here. i got all the hardware working, and i can record tv, but i need some advice selecting codecs..

the card i have is a compro "videomate tv" series, a low end card with no hardware encoding. which means that i have to select video and audio codecs for it to use for on-the-fly software compression. im running into trouble because all the video codecs i have avaliable to me (microsoft ones + xvid) all work too slowly at the resolution i want (640x480). the video is either really compressed looking, or choppy. i know i need a better codec, so instead of guessing, im asking you guys.

heres the important system specs:

- AMD athalon 64 bit 3200+ (single core, 2GHz)
- 512megs generic DDR400 ram (one stick)
- Crappy ATA 66 hard drive (i plan to upgrade to a raid 0 SATA configuration if this works)
- matrox millenium g400 (oldie, but goodie), 32mb SDRAM, AGP 2x (and please dont tell me to get a better card, this comptuer will never need to render anything in 3D)

so, whats a free, efficient, good looking codec (both video and audio) that i can use on this system for realtime compression without choppyness? filesize isnt really an issue but id like to keep it down.

goodie · Post by **goodie** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:41 am

If you have enough hard drive space, you could use a lossless codec, such as HuffYUV. MPEG2 also works very well, but it can be a little blocky if the bitrate is too low.

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:43 am

If you can install the codec, try Ogg Theora. MPEG-1 is a rather old standard, so it compresses quickly. Avoid using MPEG-4, H.264, Windows Media (ick

), or other high-compression codecs, especially since you don't have a hardware compressor.

My setup for recording TV:
- 2.6 ghz Celeron
- 1 gig RAM
- ATI TV Wonder VE card ($10 clearance at Best Buy!

)
- Panasonic VCR

What software are you using? Freevo? MythTV? (both are free and pretty good, they just don't run on my old 450mhz TV connected PC...

)

So, yeah. MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 at a high bitrate is most likely your best shot. If there's any way to dump into AVI files, you could do that, provided you have enough disk space. If it still doesn't work out so hot, look into getting a better TV tuner card. A lot of the new ones come with MPEG encoding hardware now. (A new graphics card wouldn't do you any good...)

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:51 am

the software im using is the one that came with the card, it is by no means fancy, but the remote the also came with it works with it (you can even open it from your desktop using the remote!), so i saw no reason to replace it. this is more of a tv recording solution than a comprehensive media center (at least at this point)

are you saying that i can use mpeg 2 in an avi? that would be handy. this thing seems to output avis.

hopefully i dont need a new card, id hate to think i paid $60 for a card that cant even work properly in a modern comptuer.

as an aside, filesize is sort of an issue in that i can only write to my hard drive at a fininte speed. i really want some SATA raid though, that would be sweet.

anyways, ill give the mpeg 2 a shot, seems like the best bet.

goodie · Post by **goodie** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:21 am

Most capture programs have a place where you can change it from AVI to MPEG. If the software you're using doesn't have such an option, you could just download one that does.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:27 pm

Realtime encoding is ok, but you do have problems. Namely you need good ram, CPU and video card. Example would be my setup (when it had XP), it was an Intel P4 2.26GHz, ATI Radeon 9000 (all-in-wonder), 256MB ram. I was able to do MPEG-2 realtime encoding at higher quality then most DVDs have with a frames per second lose of <1.

Now you can find a better setup then that, and so realtime encoding shouldn't be a problem, perticularly if you have the right software. I would suggest getting something worth the money, open-source or freeware might sound good but most if any are not up to the task of keeping the quality high.

If you are really out for the best quality, you can't get better then hardware encoders. They encode slower then realtime (generally) and also don't have such a drain on your system resources. If you want I have two models I've been looking at.