Fast .ts > .mkv conversion

[NewbieCanuck]

So I've finally got a good capture cards, and in following some of the posts and guides here I've been able to convert my output for archival purposes, using RipBot264.

The process is quite slow, needless to say, and I was wondering how the uploaders manage to have programs online within minutes of the broadcast's end.

I would like to take my captured broadcasts (1080i, MPEG2), deinterlace and save as h.264 with the original AC3 sound at a higher bit-rate than the 1280p file found online. I can do that now, but I'd like to be able to do it faster and more easily. Are the uploaders just cutting corners or using super-secret hardware I've never heard of? If it's a choice between speed and quality, I'll go for quality.

[poisondeathray]

So I've finally got a good capture cards, and in following some of the posts and guides here I've been able to convert my output for archival purposes, using RipBot264.

The process is quite slow, needless to say, and I was wondering how the uploaders manage to have programs online within minutes of the broadcast's end.

I would like to take my captured broadcasts (1080i, MPEG2), deinterlace and save as h.264 with the original AC3 sound at a higher bit-rate than the 1280p file found online. I can do that now, but I'd like to be able to do it faster and more easily. Are the uploaders just cutting corners or using super-secret hardware I've never heard of? If it's a choice between speed and quality, I'll go for quality.

1) Timezones: folks out east get the broadcast a few hours earlier

2) Choice of capture format, deinterlacer, resizer, encoding options: If you capture 1080p, no need to deinterlace. Depending on the choice of deinterlacer, this could make the process 1-15x faster. Same with resizers - some are faster than others. e.g. bicubic is faster than lanczos4. Depending on the encoding settings, you can make the process take 1-3x longer or 1-3x faster. There is always a trade off between quality & speed. I suspect they cut corners and use the fairly fast options

You can also capture straight to h.264 in real-time with hardware like the HD-PVR, and use h264ts_cutter to cut commericals out.

[NewbieCanuck]

About timezones, I'm talking about a few minutes after the original, EST broadcast.

Considering the low bit rates they use (~3300 for video) and the usually-good quality, you would think they're not cutting many corners. Real-time encoding, resizing and frame-rate conversion at such a low bit rate couldn't look that good.

[poisondeathray]

Maybe they have "special access" at the TV station?

Output from HD-PVR looks decent, and you can capture 720p directly, so that would be faster than capturing, then re-encoding. Even on a fast dual socket workstation with minimal filtering, it would take >30min to encode from a capture for a 44min TV show in a hour timeslot; using hardware like HD-PVR would save that time

Also uploading the files should take more than a few minutes, shouldn't it? - Even if you archive it in pieces (winrar) and upload on several parallel internet connections simultaneously. Or they have several fiber links

[NewbieCanuck]

Well of course there's far more than one station involved - although a large share of it comes from local Toronto stations, has (unlike most US stations) they use the full bit rate. However, given the speed with which live events turn up, and how recent the HD-PVR is on the market, I'm fairly confident neither is involved.

I do know that the uploads aren't being done on anything like a home connection, so upload speed isn't an issue.

I don't want to join them, I'd just like to be able to archive my own captures, but at a higher bit rate and resolution as efficiently as they do.