convert HDtv capture to dvd or mp2 format?

[nidaros]

I have the new MyHD MDP-100 tuner card...
I can capture in HD format... HOwever I would like to be able to edit out commercials and burn to DVD? Is there help with this topic here or anywhere else?

thanks for your replies...


Nidaros

[Xesdeeni]

I don't have a card (yet), but I've downloaded some transport streams to play with (to be honest, I don't know which card they were captured with). AVSForum (http://www.avsforum.org) has lots of discussion, but they're just getting started on processing the video.

I have been able to do some conversions, with minimal success, using a couple of different methods.

I tried BBDMUX from bbMPEG's tools (http://members.home.net/beyeler/bbmpeg.html) to extract the video and audio. The video file seems to be complete, but I'm having problems with my codecs. I have Premiere 6.5 installed, which installs the MainConcept MPEG 2 decoder. I also have Elecard's MPEG 2 player installed. When I play back with MediaPlayer, I get the Elecard splitter and MainConcept decoder. I get the Elecard splitter and decoder in Elecard's MPEG 2 player, naturally. In both cases, the entire video plays (Elecard's decoder can play the video-only files at almost full speed on my 1.1GHz Athlon, but the MainConcept one cannot). But when I try to load this video into AVISynth for processing, using the DirectShowSource() command, the last part of the clip is missing.

I couldn't get the modified versions of DVD2AVI and MPEG2DEC.dll to work as they said they would. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, because I got various problems, including crashes. As with all this stuff, we appear to be on the BLEEDING edge.

I tried using HDTVToMPEG2 (http://www.midwinter.com/~bcooley/) as well. In this case the first part of the clip is missing, even when played back with MediaPlayer or the Elecard player.

Audio is a bigger mess. The audio file made by BBDMUX didn't play in the Elecard player. It was accepted into BeSweet, so I tried AC3 to AC3. Elecard played the result, but it had some weird problems. I'm afraid I don't know too much about AC3 audio, so if I can't find a way to just extract it from the transport stream data, I'm not sure what to try.

Anyway, with the fractions of clips I converted via AVISynth, I then encoded them for test on a DVD. Three of the four clips were actually from film, so I decimated them to 23.976 Fps in AVISynth before encoding. The other was a full 59.94 Fps, so I scaled it and then interlaced it.

TMPGEnc worked great on all four clips. I set "3:2 pulldown on playback" for the three 23.976 Fps clips and they looked great. The interlaced clip was great as well.

CCE had more problems. The interlaced clip was great, but I think I did something wrong with the film clips. I encoded them at 23.976 Fps progressive, and then ran pulldown.exe on the results. I don't do any DVD conversions with film, but I'd read that was what I needed to do. The results had problems. Some frames were fine. Others were obviously duplicated fields. Single-stepping with my DVD player showed the effect. The TMPGEnc clips single-stepped from full frame to full frame, but there was some field ordering problem with the CCE clips.

The audio was all screwed up. It was out of sync by a lot. And it sounded like it was improperly mixed. Although I don't have a 5.1 system, I thought it would played back properly in my stereo, as are other 5.1 movies I watch. But again, I don't know much about the audio.

Xesdeeni

[DJRumpy]

I'm assuming you have all of the necessary codecs for this, but I use this method for regular broadcasts. The same principles should apply. I use AVISynth, and the TRIM command to quicly remove any commericials, and end up with just your main movie. It works very well. You'll also need virtualdub to quickly spot the frame numbers your working with. Open your source in Virtualdub, and scroll the the starting point where you want your output to begin and where it should stop (commercial points). note the frame number, and create an avisynth script with the basic input lines like so. This assuems an AVI capture. If it's MPEG, use MPEG2DEC, and DVD2AVI to serve it to AVISynth:

AVISource("c:\capture.avi")
trim(1500,1920) ++ Trim(2590,2720)

each TRIM command captures the actual movie part of your source..of course you'll have to plug the actual frame numbers in. It takes about 10 mintues to get the frame numbers out of 2 hours of source using this method. If it looks too messy, or hard to keep this way, you can also write it like this:
input=AVISource("c:\capture.avi")
seg1=Trim(input,1500,1920)
seg2=Trim(input,2590,2720)
video=seg1 ++ seg2
video

[fingernailX]

HDTV captures are one of the 18 different stds under ATSC. They are MPEG2 but are transport streams, small packets of self contained data, and are unlike VOBs, svcd program streams, or .dat files. Fortunately there is freeware to deal with this: http://www.midwinter.com/~bcooley/ and a guide http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dtv2avi.html for conversion of high bitrate, high res MPEG2 to high res, moderate bitrate DIVX/XVID.


As an aside, Microsoft and Panasonic will try to save the current DVD lasers and crop of dvd writers by bringing out the high-mat (sp?) format which is HDTV res in a MPEG4 based codec and on a 9 or 4.3 gb dvd disc.

Blue lasers and media will allow the full ATSC streams of a 2-3 hr movie to be written in the original format.

It will interesting to see who wins. One benefit for those with needs to archive DV footage on a non-linear format (not tape) will be the ability to burn 30gb data discs of DV avis.

BYW - I am looking for a 'reasonably priced' component in hdtv capture card that works in something other than a dual G4 mac. Any suggestions?

[DJRumpy]

fingernailX, do you have any info on the makeup of this stream? Maybe a link, or some faq's. I'd be interested in seeing the format.