New Setup - Advice/Help Wanted (2 Viewers)

[kiwijunglist]

I don't know how HDPVR works, because I don't own one but I assume the HDPVR is transcoding if it allows you to change the quality of the .ts stream. With a tv tuner card no transcoding occurs. Ideally the HDPVR shouldn't be changing the video and should deliver the .ts stream unchanged to the tvserver, if the HDPVR is re-encoding the transport stream then this would definitely result in a loss of video quality.

Your TV should be set to 60hz

I can't offer any more insight than the above.

 

[Simfreak]

The HDPRV doesn't transcode. Its taking the RAW video signal from the source component, encodes it into h.264, stuffs it into a TS stream and transfers that stream to the computer hard drive where it is stored.
This is how all encoders work, except sometimes to encode is in mpeg instead of h264 etc.
Just like with other hardware encoders you can adjust the bitrate of which the source is captured at, which is what i am referring to.
As far as frame rate goes, i was testing on my gaming computer which is set to 60hz. I was getting very little in the terms of dropped frames, so i do not think that was the issue. I think over the course of 20 mins i had about 10 dropped frames reported.

Transcoding is different. Transcoding is taking one format and converting it to another or adjusting the current codec for things like bitrate/framerate etc. Which is not whats happening since the source is RAW video from the digital receiver.

In either case i figured out half of it. After installing the ARC software i set the encode rate to the MAX and now can confirm on my recordings from MP that they are 15MBs;
My problem now is the actual playback from MP server to the MP client; This appears to be streaming at 2MBs which tells me that MP is doing some sort of Transcoding when sending to the client. This is where i need help editing the stream rate or transcoding that MP is using to send to the client.
If there is anyone else that had input on this I would appreciate it. a 1080p recording played back at 2MBs is pretty bad when compared to just using the Network DVR that comes from DTV.

 

[kiwijunglist]

The HDPRV doesn't transcode. Its taking the RAW video signal from the source component, encodes it into h.264, stuffs it into a TS stream and transfers that stream to the computer hard drive where it is stored.

If you're recording an HDTV stream it is likely already in h264 so the tuner is not encoding into h264.

If the tuner offers different bitrates (like you said earlier), then it must be transcoding the stream into a different bitrate, as the HDTV signal is a fixed bitrate.

MP tvserver doesn't do any transcoding, it doesn't have that feature.

EDIT: Oh sorry I thought you were talking about the network attached tuner, rather than network attached external video source recorder.
Regardless TV-SERVER DOES NOT DO ANY TRANSCODING. Good luck.

 

[kiwijunglist]

@mm1352000 - Why would tvserver record at 15mbps then stream the recording to a client at 2mbps, this makes no sense to me and seems like an impossible situation as tvserver doesn't transcode a stream. can u comment please thanks

 

[sjevtic]

Upgrading seemed to work

Now here comes the next question: Performance.
I am noticing a lot of stuttering (watching the nfl play offs right now);
I know its not hardware related; The Server is running at 1% and the client maybe 3%. The client is dual 680s in SLI and a i7 so i dont think thats it. The network is cat6 gb, so thats not it either.
I do notice that the client is only getting data at only 1.5MBs; or 12mbs. I am using HDPVR's
The HDPVR's can record up to something like 15MB's Is there a way to adjust mediaportal to enocode at a higherbit rate? Also stream to the client at a higher bitrate?
Also
I am using the built in LAV for everything. Should i change it? The native file for the HDPVR is a TS stream;
Thanks!

A couple of things to consider and/or try:

• Have you tried ffdshow and/or other codecs? It is usually worth experimenting. Also, is the result different when playing back one of your TV-Server recordings vs. playing back a Showbiz recording?
• Are you doing RTSP (default) or SMB (occasionally referred to as UNC) streaming from TV-Server to your MP client? I seem to remember having some issues with RTSP streaming and things improving after changing to the latter.
• Do you have the latest HD-PVR drivers *and* firmware? I seem to recall that only some driver releases included firmware.
• I bought three HD-PVRs and was never happy with them. They were both unstable (locked up requiring frequent reboots) and had recording quality issues (stuttering/dropped frames. I replaced them with the internal Colossus cards, and couldn't be happier. They're smiilar to the HD-PVRs in a lot of ways, but are stable and generally produce good quality results.

Sasha

 

[Simfreak]

I think i found the problem and its pretty lame. ARC soft has the slide bar mislabeled; they have it labeled as 13.5MB/s where they mean Mb/s; There seems to be a contradiction in the software that i never noticed. Looking at the video file its listing it as kbs not KBs @14215kbs which is about right.
When streaming i am getting about 1.8MBs which is 14400kbs add in the audio stream and thats dead on.
You may anoint me with the dunce cap now.

Havent really tried any other codec's yet, I was wondering what would be the best to use. Should i use ARC/coreavc etc.[DOUBLEPOST=1358271479][/DOUBLEPOST]Ok; just changed to UNC mode (i think its working); and Changed the h264 codec to ffdshow dxva and playback is much improved;.
Does anyone know if there are better codecs out there? Like should i install the ARC codec? or CoreAVC?
Also it seems that comskip isnt auto skipping commercials; Works fine when i hit the next chapter button (though definatly needs more tweaking); Yes i checked off the box in Videos Automatically commercial skip......

By the way, thanks for everyones help so far; might not sound like it in the posts, but its all really appreciated.

 

[kiwijunglist]

use LAV/ffdshow/pdvd/msdmo

im not a fan of coreavc

there are some issues with comskip autoskip that are currently being addressed, use the skip fwd button on your remote