HD PVR vs. PVR 2 bit rate quality

[ET3D]

My HD PVR died and I bought a new HD PVR 2. I was recording previously with the bundled ArcSoft software and now with Capture.

I'm recording 720p movies. Previously the bitrate was set to 7mbps, but the movies were typically 3Mbps to 4Mbps, depending on content, and the quality was good. With Capture when I set 7Mbps I get 7Mbps, and when I set 3Mbps I get terrible quality and skipped frames. So with the HD PVR 2 I'm using about twice as much disk space as previously.

Is there anything I can do to get the same compression performance I got before?

[badyu17]

No, HD-PVR 2 uses different encoding chip. I think first PVR compressed better, it didn't try to reach exact average bitrate you set if the movie is not difficult to compress which means final bitrate could be well below value you chose (In VBR mode of course). With HD-PVR 2 my experience is that whatever the content, it will always try to reach bitrate you set, even if the content is very easy. Encoder in PVR 1 is probably little better.

[ET3D]

Thanks for the reply. I feel rather screwed. Bought a newer version, thought it would be better, and it's worse in one major way.

Is there any way to re-encode the captures in a way that will get me similar quality / bitrate to what the HD PVR gave?

[fritzi93]

Are you using constant or variable bitrate with the PVR2?

[ET3D]

Are you using constant or variable bitrate with the PVR2?

Variable.

I tried re-encoding with FFMPEG (using FFmpegYAG) at 3.2Mbps and it produced good results, but was pretty slow (22fps for a 50fps movie). I'll try play with FFMPEG settings directly and perhaps try to encode the movie at 25fps.

[ET3D]

After playing with FFMPEG I settled on recording 1080i video instead of 720p (it's from a settop box) and then using '-deinterlace -preset faster -crf 23'. The result is a 25fps movie with a bitrate 3-4Mbps that looks quite good. Conversion rate is 16fps, but because the movie is 25fps it's not that terrible.