How to capture ATSC to .ts file with WinTV HVR-1250

[tgcujo]

Hello everyone, I have done countless googling and can not find an answer on how it's done.

My WinTV HVR-1250 works just fine with Windows Media Center and the included WinTV software but I can't for the life of me figure out how I can get my hands on some good, standard, no-strings attached .ts video from it. I want to save videos without having to deal with proprietary formats

I don't know if I just missed some key phrases on my searches or if nobody cares about ATSC but I would greatly appreciate any leads some people more in the know could send me way.

[edDV]

Hello everyone, I have done countless googling and can not find an answer on how it's done.

My WinTV HVR-1250 works just fine with Windows Media Center and the included WinTV software but I can't for the life of me figure out how I can get my hands on some good, standard, no-strings attached .ts video from it. I want to save videos without having to deal with proprietary formats

I don't know if I just missed some key phrases on my searches or if nobody cares about ATSC but I would greatly appreciate any leads some people more in the know could send me way.

The Hauppage WinTV 7 software that comes with it saves analog or digital tuner captures to *.ts extension files.

If yours came with WinTV 6 you can update for free if you have any WinTV CD.

[DarrellS]

He should probably have no problem since he has a newer card but when I tried to upgrade from WinTV 6, they told me that my disc that came with my HVR-1800 was only a driver disc and refused to upgade. Said that I needed to buy a WinTV 6 disc before I could upgrade. I already had an older copy of WinTV 7 that I downloaded when it was first released before they started charging for it.

Pretty sorry of Hauppauge to charge you to buy something that they should give you for free.

No problem since WinTV 7 is a piece of crap and WinTV 6 will capture ATSC as a MPEG-2 program stream which Videoredo 3 supports. VideoRedo 3 doesn't support TS files.

[yoda313]

Yeah I think your problem is using windows media center to record. It will give you some funky file. I don't know what it does for high def but it won't be a standard ts/tp file. You'll have to use the supplied hauppauge software to do that.

[JimmyS]

Untill you can obtain the Hauppage software, DVR2MPG will quickly and easily stream copy the contents of a dvr-ms file into an mpg container. It's available on the download page of the WatchHDTV site.

[usually_quiet]

If you have Media Center recordings that you want to convert to .ts, I'm using this method for converting unencrypted .wtv recordings from ATSC channels to .ts files. It seems to be more reliable than using DVRMSToolbox's DVRMStoMPEGGUI, DVR2MPG or DVBPortal's TSConverter.

Although using filter graphs seems complicated, it actually is fairly simple to do, if you know what filters to use. It is quick to set up once you have had a little practice. Success depends on having a good MPEG multiplexer filter capable of working with both SD and HD sources, along with a compatible dump filter or file writer filter. I found some from ATI that were installed for my ATI TV card's OEM TV recording software. Hauppauge probably provides something similar. I'm not certain, but I think installing DVRMSToolbox provided Moonlight M71 Muxer and Moonlight DumpPOS, which I like better.

ACE Mega CodecS Pack 6.03 - Professional Edition at freecodecs.com supposedly has the needed Moonlight filters as well. If you use this codec pack as your source ONLY install Moonlight DumpPos Filter and Moonlight MPEG-2 Multiplexer to avoid screwing up your system with a bunch of unwanted codecs.

These instructions are from my notes on how to create a .TS file from a .wtv file

1. Open Graphstudio.
2. Click "File" on the menu bar, then "Add Media File..." from the drop-down menu
3. Select a .wtv recording to be converted. Use the "all files" setting for "Files of Type"
4. Delete all the filter boxes in the graph except the one for the .wtv file, which is the leftmost filter in the graph. (Select by clicking an item, then right-click it and choose "Delete Selection" from the pop-up menu.)
5. Click "Graph" on the menu bar then "Insert filter..." to bring up a list of DirectShow filters installed on the PC
6. Selected an MPEG Multiplexer. (Moonlight M71 Muxer)
7. Configure Moonlight M71 Muxer to convert to a .TS file (default setting)
8. Pick a file writer filter or dump filter. (Moonlight DumpPOS)
9. Choose a location for the output file by using the "Browse" button and enter the output file name and .ts for the file extention.
10. Drag and drop to connect the DVR Out-1 Pin from the Stream Buffer Source box to the Audio In pin (Input0) on the Moonlight M71 Muxer filter. An additional filter, PBDA DTFilter, is added automatically and 2 more pins appear on the Moonlight M71 Muxer filter.
11. Drag and drop to connect the DVR Out-2 Pin from the Stream Buffer Source box to the Video In pin (Input1) on the Moonlight M71 Muxer filter. An additional filter, PBDA DTFilter 0001, is added automatically.
12. Drag and drop to connect the M71 Out pin on the multiplexer filter to the Input pin on the output file box.
13. Start the conversion by clicking the green start button (arrow). (The controls are under the menu bar.) While the conversion is taking place, the square stop control is red.
14. .dvr-ms files can be converted similarly, but the pins used to connect the Stream buffer Source (the .dvr-ms file) to the muxer are DVR Out-1 for Audio and DVR Out-3 for video

For editing a .ts file, TS Sniper seems more reliable than the other free solutions I tried. Although it cuts at the GOP level, it is usually good enough for trimming the file and removing commercials. The latest VideoReDo is a good paid solution and frame-accurate.

Graphstudio also works for placing the edited .ts file into a .mpg container. You basically do the same thing as you did before, but use "Add Media File" to select the .ts file and use Moonlight M71 multiplexer's program stream setting. To change the setting to program stream, right-click the Moonlight M71 Muxer box, double-click on "Transport stream" in the right pane of the dialog window and select "Program stream". I often have problems editing these .mpg files for some reason, especially if they are from an HD source, so I leave this step until last. Converting to .mpg isn't really necessary, but it is helpful when playing the files on my PC.

[edDV]

He should probably have no problem since he has a newer card but when I tried to upgrade from WinTV 6, they told me that my disc that came with my HVR-1800 was only a driver disc and refused to upgade. Said that I needed to buy a WinTV 6 disc before I could upgrade. I already had an older copy of WinTV 7 that I downloaded when it was first released before they started charging for it.

Pretty sorry of Hauppauge to charge you to buy something that they should give you for free.

No problem since WinTV 7 is a piece of crap and WinTV 6 will capture ATSC as a MPEG-2 program stream which Videoredo 3 supports. VideoRedo 3 doesn't support TS files.

MPeg2 TS files can be cut at I frames (half second accuracy) in HDTV2MPeg2 , TSSnipper or with frame accuracy in the Womble editors or Vegas, etc.

[tgcujo]

Grabbed a copy of WinTV 7 and gives .ts files.

I was kind of hoping to get linked to an awesome super-stable lightweight program where you punch in a channel and it rips it but this will do.

Thanks.

[DarrellS]

He should probably have no problem since he has a newer card but when I tried to upgrade from WinTV 6, they told me that my disc that came with my HVR-1800 was only a driver disc and refused to upgade. Said that I needed to buy a WinTV 6 disc before I could upgrade. I already had an older copy of WinTV 7 that I downloaded when it was first released before they started charging for it.

Pretty sorry of Hauppauge to charge you to buy something that they should give you for free.

No problem since WinTV 7 is a piece of crap and WinTV 6 will capture ATSC as a MPEG-2 program stream which Videoredo 3 supports. VideoRedo 3 doesn't support TS files.

MPeg2 TS files can be cut at I frames (half second accuracy) in HDTV2MPeg2 , TSSnipper or with frame accuracy in the Womble editors or Vegas, etc.

I'll try HDTV2MPeg2 and TSSniper when I get another capture from my Hauppauge HD-PVR. I tried H264TS Cutter which worked pretty well but when I got close to the end, it was out of sync so I had to use it to cut each section one at a time and I believe I used TS Splitter to join the TS files into one big TS file. I was able to demux the TS file with XMuxer Pro to merge it into an MKV container.

It took me all day yesterday trying to get one two hour capture done. Trying different programs until I found a combination that worked. A single program to do everything and keep everything in sync would be nice.

Once again, Hauppauge delivers a good piece of hardware but a POS 3rd party software that won't do what you need it to do. You would think that they could bundle software that would cut commercials out of STB captures since that is what the hardware is for. The TME software captures fine but everything else about it is useless.

[edDV]

Grabbed a copy of WinTV 7 and gives .ts files.

I was kind of hoping to get linked to an awesome super-stable lightweight program where you punch in a channel and it rips it but this will do.

Thanks.

None of the ATSC/QAM tuners recode anything, they just read the broadcast TS stream into a file. There is no processing going on other than subchannel (PID) selection.

For routine captures I just cut the TS stream in HDTV to MPeg2 and output TS (or Mpg for certain purposes). Then I batch clips or edited programs into Handbreak to background encode to h.264 in a MKV wrapper. Handbreak will either deinterlace or inverse telecine based on menu selection. The x264 encoder can be set for constant quality or fit to size.

If I need to seriously edit, I can import the broadcast TS file directly into Vegas Pro 9.

[edDV]

Just noticed you are using the HVR-1250. What I said above is for ATSC/QAM digital channels. They don't recode.

But the cards differ for analog SD captures. My HVR-1600 has a hardware MPeg2 encoder for analog NTSC channels and composite/S-Video inputs. The card's output is to MPeg2 .ts same as for digital channels. There is no CPU load. You can set analog to MPeg 2 quality levels in setup. There is also an option to output to DVD .mpg rather than ts.

Your card lacks a hardware encoder for analog inputs. The HVR1250 uses "SoftPVR" to encode analog to MPeg2 using the CPU.

[donschjr]

GBPVR is free and captures in .ts format.