Okay, spent 4 days in Google and searching videohelp. Still no answers, and running out of TS editors to try on this.
I'm capturing HD 1080i video thru component output from an HD cable box, with Hauppauge's 1212 HD PVR. I have two f the PVR's one at home in Tennessee and a copy at relati8ves up East. I use both PVBR's the same way. I transfer the recordings intact to a USB stick for playback on a Panny BD player, or to external USB drives for playback on an Oppo. The videos are recorded to MPEG-TS with AC3 audio and h264 encoding. The videos look OK but audio is always out of sync after a while. By the end of a 90-minute movie audio sync is wrecked. This happens whether I play with Hauppauge's ugly player or from the USB storage.
About 1 of 3 of these recordings can be smart-rendered in TMPGEnc Smart Renderer or a frriend's Movie Studio Platinum. If the audio-only is resampled to a lower 256Hz, sync stays right on time and video isn't re-encoded. The other 2 of 3 recordings refuse to smart render. TMPGenc says there's no smart-renderable video mounted and attempts to re-encode the whole thing for 14 hours. Ditto with Movie Studio Platinum, although it gives no message -- it just re-encodes everything, period.
Well, I came up with one trick. I cut off some of the leading frames with TSrmuxeR, demux and then remux the result. On some of the remuxed stuff smart-rendering proceeds normally, no problem.
That leaves 1 of 3 recordings that refuse to be smart-rendered, no matter what. Trying to make cuts or demux with something like H264Cutter gives a message similar to ""DirectShow problem - Failure while trying to get input pin of preferred splitter/demuxer". Doesn't seem to matter whose demuxer I load, ffdshow to Cybelink's godawful stuff to haallie splitter, the vids won't load in H264Cutter. TSsniper and similar TS cutters give messages that say no IDR frames can be found. I tyll those cutters to cut on I-frames, but the results are still not smart-renderable.
So I'd like to know more about these oddball elements and why smart-rendering editors can't work with 1/3 of Hauppauge's stuff. Here's a readout of MediaInfo on a typical example:
I note that the bitrates MediaInfo reports is a bit low. Nominally it's set to 13.9mbs, always showes a max bitrate of ~20MBps, and players say the vids play at up to 15 mbps, so I'm not worried much about that -- the vids look acceptable and motion handling looks OK if the original broadcast isn't a disaster. I don't see how re-encoding atyhigher bitartes would improve anything (I tried it), and re-encoding is beside the point. Smart-renderers should be able to handle the files and resample the audio without acting crippled.Code:General ID : 0 (0x0) Complete name : F:\PKB\55 Days At Peking - 1963.TS Format : MPEG-TS File size : 13.0 GiB Duration : 2h 55mn Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 10.6 Mbps Maximum Overall bit rate : 18.0 Mbps Video ID : 4113 (0x1011) Menu ID : 1 (0x1) Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : Main@L4.0 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=32 Codec ID : 27 Duration : 2h 55mn Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 9 729 Kbps Maximum bit rate : 20.0 Mbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate : 29.970 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Interlaced Scan order : Top Field First Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.157 Stream size : 11.9 GiB (91%) Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 Audio ID : 4352 (0x1100) Menu ID : 1 (0x1) Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Mode extension : CM (complete main) Format settings, Endianness : Big Codec ID : 129 Duration : 2h 55mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 384 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossy Delay relative to video : -100ms Stream size : 481 MiB (4%)
Any insight into what 's going on?
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Last edited by LMotlow; 5th Nov 2014 at 10:00.
- My sister Ann's brother -
Everybody who has one of these devices eventually realizes that there is something a little odd about TS files Hauppauge's HD capture devices create. They are probably different enough from the the MTS files produced by cameras, which all the editors you have mentioned using are designed to edit, to cause problems for those editors. ..although that is just a guess based on the fact that TS Doctor and VideoReDo TV Suite H.264, which are designed to work for captured DTV broadcasts, tend to work well for editing TS files created Hauppauge's HD capture devices too.
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I guess you are lucky that 2 out of 3 videos can be smart-rendered. I have no such luck with the 1212. All my 1080i recordings are not being smart-rendered by TMPGEnc. I have no problem with 720p videos however.
The issues I have with the 1080i are related to the length of GOP. With interlaced video, any GOP that is longer than 30 frames is not blu-ray compliant, and thus won't be smart-rendered by TMPGEnc. Since your Mediainfo is showing N=32, I'm guessing that's where your problem lies.
I gave up on the 1212. I'm now using Hauppauge's Colossus, which is encoding 1080i with a shorter GOP, making the file ''smart-renderable'' by TMPGEnc. I've read that the encoding engine is not the same in the 1212 and the Colossus, and that's why the GOP length is not the same. -
The original Hauppauge HD-PVR (no HDMI) uses an Ambarella A2 platform encoder chip while the The Hauppauge Colossus uses a ViXS XCode 3111 encoder chip.
Now that encoding was mentioned, I seem to remember reading something here at VideoHelp that said sometimes the hardware encoders use H.264 encoding options that smart rendering engines can't deal with properly. -
Thanks to all. I was suspicious myself about 32-frame GOP's when I saw it in Movie Studio's timeline.
OTOH I'm not making BluRay. I play them as ts. Was thinking if there's something in the headers that could be supplied, it might be worth learning about. But if it's that some NBLE's dislike that GOP size, how do TSDoctor or VideoReDo get away with it? I think I downloaded and tried the VRD trial but got the same results. I could be confused after all the software I've tried but will take another look. Meanwhile recording at 720p isn't an option -- both cable boxes output 1080i on all channels regardles of the image size being broadcast. If the broadcast is 4:3, it's 4:3 pillared in a 16:9 frame. Been thru that bit already.
Anyway, the GOP idea doesn't seem to be a problem with some 1-out-of-3 videos that did actually work. I just looked at two of them with 32-frame and 35-frame GOP's that were both smart-rendered in TMPGenc after getting the demux/remux treament with TSMuxeR. Why that worked for those few but not with others is the mystery I'm looking into.Last edited by LMotlow; 19th Oct 2014 at 15:42.
- My sister Ann's brother -
TSDoctor didn't cut exactly where the preview screen indicated, so I had to fiddle with it and accept a few unwanted frames at end and start. There's nothing about smart rendering or not in the program, although the ads imply that image quality isn't affected -- I guess it's not, if you edit only on key frames as I just did. The "advanced tools" corrections aren't explained, but they do give warnings that you should know what you're doing. Since I don't know what I'm doing with their advanced corrections, and since the program has no explanation or link for them, I hit Cancel. As it was, after reading their manual I loaded a video and the program announced with a lot of flashing lights and exclamation marks that the video had been "checked" with TSDoctor's advanced video checkers and was found "suitable", and reported no errors. The final output has the word "fixed" in the title -- not sure what kind of "corrections" TSDoctor made (they were never explained), but the result is not smart-renderable and audio synch continues to drift in and out throughout the video. I can get the same out of sync results with the ugly editing software that came with the HD PVR.
Looks like I spend a few months trying to research why simple demuxers can correct some of Hauppauge's videos but can't correct others. Two things are for certain, though:
- The Colossus card won't fit in most HTPC's because of the card's height, which strikes me as pretty stupid considering the card's purpose.
- I always thought Hauppauge's stuff seemed pretty stupid anyway, so this was my first (and will be my last) investment in their product line.Last edited by LMotlow; 19th Oct 2014 at 17:42.
- My sister Ann's brother -
Okay, folks, here's one for ya. Go back to the video mentioned in the previous post, #8 above. I made a different cut point in TSDoctor and a new "fixed" video. Yep, this video had bad audio sync like before and couldn't be smart rendered. For the hell of it I loaded it into TSmuxeR and told it to demux the thing and make sure the frame rate was set to 30000/1001. No other cuts, no splits, no chapters, nothing else. Demuxed the TSDoctor output in about 5 minutes. Then I used TSmuxeR to remux its own output. Then loaded it into TMPGEnc. Voila!S mart rendered beginning to end, with several cuts along the way. Loaded the finished TS onto a USB drive. It plays with perfect audio sync at all points in both BD players.
All I have to do now is figured out why it worked in this case, but not with just simple remuxing. That should only take a few months of work. Off to the nearest tech book store.- My sister Ann's brother -
Wanting the option to get a Colossus is the reason I bought a MATX HTPC case that can take a full-height card. It was challenging enough to work in that I'm glad I didn't buy a low-profile case. With all the ports on the bracket (A/V in, AV out, optical audio in, optical audio out, HDMI out, IR blaster port) it has to be that big. To make a low-profile device, Hauppauge would need to remove some ports, or move them to a daughter bracket connected to the main board by internal cables.
I looked around a lot before deciding on the Colosssus. Every HD capture device has a fatal flaw or two. You just have to learn to live with them.
The competing HD capture products from other manufacturers that encode with hardware are geared toward game recording, and there is no easy way to do unattended recording with the manufacturer provided software nor is there any other software that works with them. This means that someone has choices other than Hauppauge, only if he/she is able to control some or all of the recording process manually. I wish it weren't so, but Hauppauge appears to be the only company left that is interested in meeting the needs of a niche market, HTPC users who want to build their own PVR using an HD capture device of some kind rather than a PC TV tuner or CableCARD tuner. -
Right, usually_quiet, I dig the logic behind the Colossus (except for the case size requirement). Also realize that Hauppauge is really the only choice today, thanks to the what we like to call "free" enterprise in this country and "free"-dom of speech (I believe they call it corporate cowtowing in less "advanced" cultures). Be that as it may, now that I have already gutted one TV equipment cabinet to hold an HTPC of normal dimensions, and now that the budget is broken for yet another product, and there being no place to put a bigger HTPC without getting rid of the TV and our air conditioner, I think I'll have to wait until after I move our household to the new, bigger place in North Carolina in about 4 to 5 years.
By that time I figure the smug guys who've bought out the FCC will come up with new ways to screw consumers in the Land Of The Free. Meanwhile I'm making all the recordings I can for future revision and use. No wonder there are more and more whacko groups today who are shutting themselves up in their homes away from all the Big Brothers and collecting M16's and bazookas. I think they're nutzo, but I understand how they feel.
Last edited by LMotlow; 20th Oct 2014 at 11:25.
- My sister Ann's brother -
When did hello_hello join this discussion?
[Edit] For what it is worth, I wouldn't say the Colossus is perfect either. It was just the best compromise, and I struggled with it initially.
In some ways a CableCARD tuner would have been a better choice, but I didn't want to pay about $90 per year to rent a CableCARD or give up my cable box to get a CableCARD for free.Last edited by usually_quiet; 20th Oct 2014 at 16:09. Reason: correct double negative
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hello_hello didn't. Corrected. For a couple years of browsing I still get you two mixed up. My bad.
Yep, you're right, these PVR's each have their good 'n bad points. No surprise, they'd all be in court if they made things too easy. Fortunately I've learned enough from this forum since 2008 to know there are workarounds. Problem is finding a workaround for this particular brand of beast.
One thing I don't have a problem with, so to speak. Some of these HD broadcasts are the pits and need cleanup. I use Avisynth in some of them to tweak, many end up looking better as SD BluRay or DVD 720x480. Seems that downsizing and re-encoding at high bitrates hides many broadcast defects. The TSDoctor and remux routines handle some of it, Avisynth and downsizing gets the rest. Takes about half a day to get the final output.
Truth to tell, I don't care so much about the extra stuff like intros, commercials, and all that. The big problem for me is getting audio sync to behave.- My sister Ann's brother -
I have the same trouble with audio sync from my original Hauppage DVR on every file, and it's usually progressive, not straight line. So is there any final consensus on how to fix this?
Has anyone tried all the possible recording formats?
Could it be the Roku Box? Or other source? -
Like I said, I can smart render 1 of 3 in TMPGenc Smart Renderer and resample the audio, which fixes sync. Another 1 of 3 can be fixed with a song and dance routine of making I-frame cuts in TSDoctor, then muxing and remuxing with TSmuxeR, then smart render and resample the audio in TMPGEnc. At this point I don't think those odd-sized GOPs are the real problem, because the vids that worked OK have 32-frame and 35-frame GOPs.
The last 1 of 3 seems hopeless. I found some web posts about missing elements or indexes and other techy business but it's mighty cryptic stuff -- and anyway I don't see any software that can fix things. I re-encoded a couple of them with the likes of MultiAVCHD, TMPGEnc, etc., but that's not a fix I want to live with and takes forever. A few of 'em whose broadcast quality wasn't so hot I threw into Avisynth, removed telecine (they're film based), downsampled to SD BluRay or DVD and re-encoded. I recently did that with A Hard Day's Night off TCM and it actually looks better than the HD original. For some odd reason the TCM broadcast of North By Northwest was smart-rendered and fixed right off the bat. Go figure.
Been looking over ffmpeg for some clues. Haven't found anything and didn't get into ffmpeg until now. I'm figuring that what prevents smart rendering is some way that HDCP side effects muck up the works. Yesterday I ended up with an oddity. I have a broadcast of a movie that I opened with DGAVCindex and again with VirtualDub and saved a copy of the sound track with each of those. The audio files were over 1GB each. Then I made a "fixed" .ts file with TSDoctor and got a sound track that was only 1/2 that size. It still couldn't be smart rendered, so I'll make a DVD of it. So far that one's looking better, too, after removing macroblocks and low bitrate broadcast artifacts. Most of the stuff I get off PBS can be smart rendered.
Yep, that's doing it the hard way. Has to be a secret to this.Last edited by LMotlow; 21st Oct 2014 at 10:12.
- My sister Ann's brother -
I bought a ChannelMaster DVR for broadcast recording and it's newer tech, but still works perfectly. I wonder if Roku did something to sabotage recordings on the analog outputs.
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The Roku 2's HDMI output is 60.00 fps instead of the correct 59.94; maybe the analog outs are also oddball. But this is OT.
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i have a HomeWorx PVR
recording OTA 1080 and 720p, depends on the broadcast
the files are MTS
i load them in "video redo", which does a very good job of fixing any sync errors
just run stream fix mode and it fast copies all frames, deleteing or adding video and audio frames as needed
output can be TS or MPG -
The devices in Hauppauge's HD-PVR product line use H.264, not MPEG-2. Having worked with both MPEG-2 transport streams from TV tuner cards and the H.264 transport streams from a device in the Hauppauge HD-PVR product line, I have to say that the MPEG-2 transport streams from TV tuner cards are much easier to work with. VideReDo simply does not work as reliably with the H.264 transport streams produced by HD capture devices, even though in my experience it does work better than some other H.264-capable editors.
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I I've had the same experience re: MPEG2/h264 recording. I'll be looking into the reasons for the h264 oddities. It was proiposed that the Hauppauge's 32-frame GOP's is the problem. Yet 1 out of 3 recordings is readily smart-rendering by various apps and then remuxed with repaired in audio sync. All of those good guys have 32-frame GOP's.
Another group of 1 of 3 is demuxed with either TSDoctor or TSmuxeR, then remuxed, and the smart rendering apps have no problem. Question is, what's with the remaining 1 of 3 that smart renderers refuse to work with? h264Cutter gives me a messge on these: "DirectShow problem - Failure while trying to get input pin of preferred splitter/demuxer" (regardless which splitter/demuxer I dial into its preferences). TSsniper and similar TS cutters give messages that say "no IDR frames can be found" and refuse to proceed. So I guess I'll be looking into documentation on these problems and looking for some kind of software that can fix it.Last edited by LMotlow; 30th Oct 2014 at 10:28.
- My sister Ann's brother -
I don't exactly have the techy answer to the PVR's audio sync problems. But I found a workaround. Also tried VideoReDo, which smart-rendered some recordings that weren't renderable elsewhere. But VideoReDo's audio sync was still off. Sync drifts ahead of the video gradually, until by the end of a 2-hour movie it's almost 3 seconds ahead.
Here's the workaround I came up with:
Let's call the original PVR recording "A".
1. Make a dga project file from "A", saving the .dga file and the AC3 audio.
2A. Open the .dga project with AVCSource in Avisynth. In VirtualDub, link to the AC3 audio and save audio-only as uncompressed PCM (.wav).
2B. Edit the avs script with this code that opens the .dga + the .wav audio:
Code:vid=.dga video file aud=.wav audio file. AudoDub(vid,aud) AssumeFPS("NTSC_video",sync_audio=true) return last
3. Open the original "A" in TSmuxeR and demux only the video. Call this demuxed video "DMX"
4. Open the DMX video in TSmuxeR and remux the DMX video with the "PCM2.wav" audio file. Call the new Video "RMX"
5. In TMPGEnc Smart Renderer open the RMX audio+video file. Surprise, TMPGEnc now sees this video as smart-renderable. Resample the PCM audio to Dolby AC3. Cut off leading and trailing matter such as intros and so forth. Call this final output "B"
6. Copy B to playback media (external hard drive) and connect the drive to the BluRay player.
Excelsior!. Perfect sync from start to finish, with smart rendering OK. Takes about an hour. Pain in the neck.
Anybody with an explanation is welcome.Last edited by LMotlow; 5th Nov 2014 at 10:25.
- My sister Ann's brother -
Yes, as mentioned above, Hauppauge streams are well known to cause problems, not just smart rendering, but actually in other software as well especially editors even expensive Pro NLE's
What a convoluted workaround!
Did you try videoredo's quickstream fix suggested above ? -
Last edited by LMotlow; 5th Nov 2014 at 10:28.
- My sister Ann's brother -
But it's not "ideal" , since audio is re-encoded , and it takes a few extra steps
Why did you need AVCSource() in avisynth (why did you need the video part)? It seems you just decompressed audio to Wav ?
Did you actually have to demux with tsmuxer ? Couldn't you just uncheckmark the unwanted stream (original AC3) and add in the Wav (checkmark) then mux? Or was the actual demuxing step required ?
Have you tried SolveigMM Video Splitter ? -
I tried several things with 2 videos, including what you suggest. Audio was still off, by exactly the same amount. SolveignMM reported errors, I don't recall exactly, but refused to process the recording.
Yep, I agree it's a hassle. Now, if I knew what was actually being fixed (time codes?) I could do it another way.
I just finished another non-smart-renderable video and it worked again.- My sister Ann's brother -
Oh I didn't see the edit with sync_audio=true , maybe that is doing something ?
It seems audio related, and /or container related doesn't it? e.g. If you try it on a video only stream, does that "convince" tmpgenc to smart render ?
Other things you can try are remuxing with ffmpeg , or remuxing with eac3to which can fix audio issues, gaps as well. -
ffmpeg I don't know very well, except for really simple stuff. I guess upcoming holiday vacation would be a time to get deeper into it on my laptop.
TMPGEnc accepts 1 out of 3 of originals and re-renders perfectly. Another 1 out of 3 is accepted for smart render, but audio is off (as with these two examples). The last 1 out of 3 = no smart render, period, by anything I can find except VideoReDo.h264. But somehow VRD still can't keep audio in sync, and I read its online help until I'm blue in the face.
I ran out of things to try until I went thru the routine above. Still plan to get some literature on video processing to find out what Hauppauge is doing to those recordings. The PVR's own software can smart-edit recordings, but audio is still off.
Another mystery: Say I demux in TSmuxeR to .264 and AC3. Takes about 5 minutes. Then Remux .264 and AC3, another 5 minutes. But when I use TSmuxeR to remux the .264 and the PCM .wav, it takes almost 12 minutes. So, somethin's goin' on.Last edited by LMotlow; 5th Nov 2014 at 10:59.
- My sister Ann's brother