Which program do you use for mpg2 tv recording ?

[WinSpecToR]

So far I've tried the built in media center recording in vista, sagetv and wintv2000, they work alright but I'm looking to see what else is out there. I want to record mpeg to so I can author to DVD w/o converting to avi. What do you guys use ?

[fk]

ChrisTV is by far the best program to use with an analouge capture card. It has a built in timer to wake up the PC from hibernate/standby and you can make your own profiles to use individually for each recording, including timerrecordings. Besides that it has alot of tweaking features.

[edDV]

BeyondTV works with many hardware encoding capture devices (as do others). If you use hardware encoding, the CPU load is near zero.

I've also got Vista MCE hardware encoding two channels art a time (ATI 550 and Hauppaugue HVR-1600).


PS: When I use the HVR-1600 with BeyondTV it appears as two separate hardware tuners, one for analog in/NTSC and the other for ATSC/QAM. The single card can record two programs at a time.

[fritzi93]

TotalMedia3, came with my card, HDTV and analog. It works okay, but I don't exactly love it. :P

[lacywest]

Interesting

[calande]

For DVB-T and DVB-S, I use ProgDVB, it's my favorite and it uses low resources.

[WinSpecToR]

Thanks, will give some of the above a try!

[prouton]

The file you end up with when recording MPEG2 using a tuner card (with hardware compression) has more to do with the card than with the software. Some software will let you change the compression parameters or image size, but the default recording format is DVD ready. What you want is editing/authoring software that doesn't require conversion, like VideoRedo TVSuite. MPEG Streamclip will let you trim MPEG files without full re-encoding, but you'll then have to use something else to author the DVD.

[fritzi93]

For HDTV MPEG2 transport streams, HDTVtoMPEG2 is very useful for processing. Simple to use, has preview box, just set in/out, delete sections if desired, commercial scan works well, outputs an MPEG2 file. If you record any HDTV, it should be in your toolbox.

[WinSpecToR]

I was going to try Christv, but the reviews didn't sound very good so I passed on that one. BTW what can be used to capture vhs on Vista 64bit ? From what I remember, the Vista media center doesn't have anything for composite input.

[snafubaby]

I had been using the Adstech DVD Xpress, hooked to a vcr. I just turn the channel on the vcr to where i wanna capture a tv program, and record it using the capwiz program included with the device. It would record to mpeg2, or even DivX. Then, making things easier, i got a DVD recorder, so now i don't need to go the capture device to pc route. I will be getting a new DVD recorder with DVR at tax refund time. Yes, the Philips model with the 160gb hdd inside that they sell at Walmart, so i can record more stuff and then later author to dvd.