WinTV PVR-250 Custom Recording Profiles?

[ProperRogue]

Is there a place to download custom profiles for the recording settings used in WinTV2000? I was just hoping to mess around with settings others have used successfully.

[The_Doman]

To get you started here are some recording settings for the WINTV2000 program, I use those with my PVR150 cards.

Just run the attached register file and then start WINTV2000 again.
The following recording profiles should then be visible:

6000-8000-256
5500-8000-256
5000-8000-256
5000-7500-256
5000-7000-256
4500-6500-256
4000-6000-256

For example 5000-7000-256 wil make a recording with a variable bitrate between 5000-7000 and the audio will be 256
Depending on the on-screen action you should fit almost 2 hours on a DVD with those settings.
Just experiment a bit with those settings..


wintv2000recscustom.zip

[ProperRogue]

Cool. Thank you.

I'll give these a try.

[RabidDog]

Have you ever checked to see just how variable the bitrates are on your recordings? I get the impression with HW based encoders they have parameters set, but are really more of a pseudo variable bitrate than truly variable. Eg recordings params 5000-8000 will result in a file where 85-90-95% of the file will be 6500 with a few peaks and troughs.. eg they dont really vary the bitrate by much at all.. I mean they cant foretell the future so the bitrate must balance over a very short period? Which would lead one to think that its best record at 15000kb or Max Kbs and then re-encode later using software to strip out the excessive bitrate.

[FulciLives]

Which would lead one to think that its best record at 15000kb or Max Kbs and then re-encode later using software to strip out the excessive bitrate.

That actually is not an uncommon thing to do for people that own a hardware MPEG encoder capture card/device.

Another benefit of this is easy editing plus the ability to filter the video and audio when re-encoding with a software encoder.

Plus with a software encoder you can get a true multi-pass VBR encode.

However with a decent enough quality source and a decent enough bitrate you don't HAVE to do it that way ... sometimes once is enough.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[The_Doman]

I mean they cant foretell the future so the bitrate must balance over a very short period? Which would lead one to think that its best record at 15000kb or Max Kbs and then re-encode later using software to strip out the excessive bitrate.

Ofcourse it's not perfect....
For really optimal results I prefer to capture in MJPEG/DV and do a 2-pass VBR encode.
This will give me superior results compared to the single pass hardware encoding.
The big problem ofcourse is all the re-encoding takes so much time it is not funny anymore.
Specially if you are capturing hours and hours a day it is very nice to be able to author your recordings directly to DVD.
And the results can still be very good..

[karelj]

Which would lead one to think that its best record at 15000kb or Max Kbs and then re-encode later using software to strip out the excessive bitrate.

I used to capture at that rate with my PVR 150, but I just started using Dscaler to capture in AVI/HuffyUV. It is time consuming to then to convert to mpeg2 but the results are vastly superior.
No more straight mpeg2 captures for me.

[RabidDog]

Surely with new dual cores (have you heard ?) you can split your re-encodes in half and let one proc do each half.. plus cpus are getting faster and faster and more capable (64 bit ext, sse3) so mpeg re-encoding should be less and less of a chore.

[yoda313]

As long as the program is capable of utilitizing the dual processing. Not all can. Check the descriptions to make sure your program can take advantage of the extra power.

[BruceSD]

A few people have mentioned in the forums that the hauppauge PVR-x50 cards typical "overshoot" the maximum bit rate when using VBR. I was looking at lordsmurf's site, and his discussion of optimal bitrates to use. He explains that for 720x480, 5500 - 8000 using VBR is optimal. If the Hauppauge cards overshoot the max rate, would a Hauppauge card at 5500 - 7000 then be equivalent to the ideal of 5500 - 8000 for VBR? I can get 2 hours (barely!) using 5500-7000 at 720x480 on a single layer DVD.

And, would the source matter, that is, already MPEG-2 compressed and therefore reduced quality/detail video from my Dish receiver benefit from that ideal bitrate, or would a slightly lower VBR yield the same results?


Sorry if the is a dumb question, maybe I misread lordsmurf's guide.