QUERY: new to recording from TV card.. woes :S

[kevingpo]

I own a Hauppauge DEC2000-T usb tv card. The software that comes with it is called DigitalTV and I like to record TV shows. The recorded file is in mpeg2. DigitalTV program can start, stop and pause recording.

I am wondering if anyone knows about the general issues of recording off a TV card, and whether the mpeg2 file gets messed up/corrupted when hitting the stop then start very fast, or when pausing a lot through a TV show.

Also, is there any special procedure I need to do if I want to convert these recorded mpeg2 TV shows into divx? I have already tried AutoGK & Dr. DivX but the resulting avi files have audio lagged by 2 seconds.

[kevingpo]

Originally posted by cybertybo:

Originally posted by kevingpo:
I own a Hauppauge DEC2000-T usb tv card. The software that comes with it is called DigitalTV and I like to record TV shows. The recorded file is in mpeg2. DigitalTV program can start, stop and pause recording.

I have a similar capture card, they are very nice, but the included software does not have as many options as some GPL and free software stuff.

I am wondering if anyone knows about the general issues of recording off a TV card, and whether the mpeg2 file gets messed up/corrupted when hitting the stop then start very fast, or when pausing a lot through a TV show.

Frequent pausing will probably screw up the audio sync. (perfect audio sync is the holy grail of video capture)If you are trying to remove comercials there are better ways to do it.

Also, is there any special procedure I need to do if I want to convert these recorded mpeg2 TV shows into divx? I have already tried AutoGK & Dr. DivX but the resulting avi files have audio lagged by 2 seconds.

As I said before, audio sync is the Holy Grail of recording. Vdubmod has an Audio offset feature that can fix this, but it is a real pain to use. Your best bet is to record directly to DIvx. You will get a MUCH smaller file, better quality and no audio lag problems.

• Use the freeware program VirtualVCR to do the recording. (use VVCRS2 to schedule in advance)VirtualVCR has some really advanced audio-sync features, and a ton of filters and options to improve your recordings.
• Use the freeware program VirtualDub in 'direct stream' mode to remove the comercials. Select the start and end of each comercial and hit the delete key. When your all done, save the file with a new name.

Both of these programs are a litttle tough to set up, but I would be happy to give you whatever help you need.

Thanks man. I gotta try VirtualVCR. You saying that it can record directly to divx?

As for the 2 mpeg2 files, should I use Dr. Divx 2.0 beta 6 separately on both files, then use VirtualDubMod to join, or join before and encode after?

[kevingpo]

All this time I been thinking/wondering why AutoGK, Dr. DivX wouldn't work. Then I found this by google:

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=2284

Looks like the dec2000-recording is tight/strict and makes invalid mpeg2 files? I have to gop-fix/resize my dec2000-recordings. Why? What is gop and why I have to de-gop my recordings before I can divx encode?

Wish Dr. Divx or AutoGK did this automatically. Anyway, was wondering which best programs can degop good? I heard ProjectX can, however when I tried using ProjectX I didn't know what to do, so hard. Any advice or tips?

[Baldrick]

click on projectx for doom9 guide.

[kevingpo]

Thanks guys, I liked using VideoReDo & MPEG Video MPEG Wizard... but now my 14 days trial for VideoReDo is up and can't continue to use free trail of MPEG Video Wizard.

I am now trying ProjectX to demux, then MPEG2Cutt (German program), then TMPGEnc simple mux to remux them together, and am back to where I used to be. ... fingers crossed