Capturing and editing game video w/ HD-PVR

[helloitsdan]

hi,

I recently bought an Hauppauge HD-PVR (which came highly recommended) in order to record video of 360 and PS3 games, and so far the quality of the test recordings I've made has been great. I've got a slight problem with it, however: the packaged Arcsoft TME recording software is diabolical for what I hope to do.

TME seems to only be able to record to MPEG-TS H.264/AAC in a fairly unreliable manner, whereas I'd like to record to something in an AVI container so that I can edit it down in Premiere/etc later on. My question, therefore, is this: does anybody know if it's possible to use the HD-PVR as a simple directshow capture device in something like VirtualDub to capture directly to a lossless AVI (YUV & PCM)? Or is there a better application to do this with than VDub?

I'm a complete newbie to video capturing, codecs, etc unfortunately, so any help would be greatly appreciated. cheers!

[jagabo]

does anybody know if it's possible to use the HD-PVR as a simple directshow capture device in something like VirtualDub to capture directly to a lossless AVI (YUV & PCM)?

No. The HD PVR is a hardware AVC/AAC/AC3 capture device. The video that arrives at the USB port from the HD PVR is already compressed. The Arcsoft capture module is simply putting it in a file. Any other capture software would do the same.

If you want lossless AVI you will need a Blackmagic Intensity Pro and probably RAID.

[helloitsdan]

does anybody know if it's possible to use the HD-PVR as a simple directshow capture device in something like VirtualDub to capture directly to a lossless AVI (YUV & PCM)?

No. The HD PVR is a hardware AVC/AAC/AC3 capture device. The video that arrives at the USB port from the HD PVR is already compressed. The Arcsoft capture module is simply putting it in a file. Any other capture software would do the same.

If you want lossless AVI you will need a Blackmagic Intensity Pro and probably RAID.

Ah, I see.

Is it possible, then, to convert this compressed video into a format which I could go on and edit in another application? I've tried MediaCoder (which I've been using for a while as a magical cure-all for any sort of video transcoding) but it chokes halfway through when trying to convert the .TS file and mencoder crashes out. From reading other posts on this forum it seems like I might need to rip the separate video and audio streams from the .TS file and mux them into a different container, but I'm not overly sure how I'd go about doing that.

Thanks again!

[jagabo]

DgAVCIndex + AviSynth + VirtualDub -> AVI (very big with lossless compression)

I just ran a quick test with some random 1080i video -- I got about 2 GB/min with HuffYUV.

[R55B]

Wow, the Arcsoft conversion is really that bad? I almost bought one of those HD-PVR's the other day, mostly for recording hdtv. Could you be a tad more specific on the reasons why that bundled software is so bad?

[jagabo]

Arcsoft's capture module isn't converting anything. All it does is put the compressed data in a M2TS or TS file. There's nothing wrong (as far as I know) with the files. The problems lie in applications that aren't robust enough to handle the full spec. I find TS to be easier for most programs to deal with.

[helloitsdan]

DgAVCIndex + AviSynth + VirtualDub -> AVI (very big with lossless compression)

I just ran a quick test with some random 1080i video -- I got about 2 GB/min with HuffYUV.

I'm sorry to be a bit dense, but I've never used any of these programs before, so could you give me a general outline of what it is I ought to be aiming for with DgAVCIndex and AviSynth? I assume with the latter I just want to take my two streams and transcode them, but what is the first app for?

(I'm afraid I don't understand the description of DgAVCIndex in the tools section. Frame serving?)

Thanks again.

Wow, the Arcsoft conversion is really that bad? I almost bought one of those HD-PVR's the other day, mostly for recording hdtv. Could you be a tad more specific on the reasons why that bundled software is so bad?

Most of my problems with TME stem from the fact that I'm looking to convert for web deployment. It's not so much as the recording is inherently poor quality or anything (quite the opposite), but the transcoding app in TME is really quite poor as it only allows you to target a number of set formats -- PSP, iPod, DVD, etc -- whereas I need to be able to fiddle with resolutions, bitrates, and formats. I'm also a little put off by just how bad the interface is, but that's neither here nor there for how well it performs.

All of that said, if you're looking to record and archive TV shows, it should do the job perfectly.

[jagabo]

Frame serving is the passing of video frames from one program to another without saving to an intermediate file. This allows you to use two or more programs to handle your video, saving quality, time, and disk space.

The DgAvcIndex + AviSynth + VirtualDub method works as follows (install all the software first, obviously):

1) Open a TS or M2TS file in DgAvcIndex. Save the project to create a .DGA index file and demux the audio.

2) Create a text file with the extension .AVS (an AviSynth script). In the text file enter the command to open the .DGA file:

AvcSource("filename.dga")

Save the text file. If you want to do any filtering in AviSynth you would add it to the script.

3) In VirtualDub open the .AVS file as if were a video. File -> Open Video File, select the .AVS file.

4) Set up VirtualDub for any filtering, import the audio that was exported in the first step (or you could import the audio into your editor later), select a compression coded (HuffYUV? Lagarith?) and any specific parameters, and Save as AVI.

[SHS]

helloitsdan get the H264TS Cutter and needless to say none of the editor have up caugth up with H264 format.