Capture Software for Hauppauge HD-PVR

[DarrellS]

What is a good alternative to Arcsoft Total Media Extreme that ships with the Hauppauge HD-PVR?

I have a problem where if I try and pause the STB or change the channel or pause the software or try and close it that it crashes my computer. It doesn't do it every time but often enough to make capturing a PITA. It either causes my screen to go black (black screen of death) or it freezes the PC. Either way, I have to restart the computer to fix the problem.

I've checked both Hauppauge and Arcsoft forums for an answer but the only fix I can find is to purchase the newer version of TME which supposedly does not have this problem. They refuse to fix the issue for the software bundled with the Hauppauge saying that the bug is in Hauppauge's software. Arcsoft did not build the Hauppauge version of TME.

I tried using SageTV and it captures fine and does not crash my computer but it does not react when I pause or change channels on the STB. I have to restart SageTV for it to see the channel change or pause. Half the time, using the TME software, when it doesn't crash, I have the same issue when I hit play on the STB, TME doesn't

Would like to know what software others are using to capture with the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR.

[fritzi93]

You might try getting the latest video drivers and Catalyst Control Center.

I've experienced the same problems. Updating the ATI drivers fixed it for a good while. Then the drivers started getting corrupted and the problem came back. Finally I realized the OS drive was failing and replaced it. All is well now.

Worth checking anyway. I've found the TME software to be satisfactory, and I don't have their newer version. Good luck.

[unclebud]

I have an HD-PVR also and tried GB-PVR a while back, the comments says it works with the HD-PVR but I couldn't get it to capture though. Maybe you'll have better luck.
https://www.videohelp.com/tools/GB-PVR

BTW-TME works fine for me without upgrading.

[DarrellS]

Yeah, I tried to try GB-PVR also and couldn't get it to see the TV screen so I uninstalled it. Tried Total Media 3.5 and it gave me an error messenger telling me that another program was using the Hauppauge and that it couldn't access it so I uninstalled it also.

I reinstalled the video drivers like fritzi suggested and it cured my problems. I guess the driver had gotten corrupted or if I remember right, I had to install an older driver before because I couldn't get the installer package to work on the latest driver. The newest driver installed fine this time. I tried all the things I mentioned in the first post that caused TME to crash and it worked fine.

Total Media Extreme captures very well so I'm glad I got it to work. The only issue I have is on long captures (3 or 4 hours), I get sync issues at the end of the file if I try and just cut out the commercials with H264TS Cutter. I have to cut it in sections to make sure it stays in sync.

I wish that TME would have the capabilities to cut the commercials without re-encoding.

[fritzi93]

Yeah, once your drivers are good, you should leave well enough alone. ATI has, shall we say, a history of buggy video drivers.

You might try tsSniper to cut out adverts and such, it works better for me than H264TS_Cutter.

Glad you sorted it out.

[DarrellS]

I've had problems with the drivers for this card since I bought it a couple of years ago. It will work fine for a while and then I get this black screen of death where the PC is still running but I get no video signal to the monitor. At first I wasn't sure it was a driver because driver updates wouldn't fix it then after one update, the problem went away for a long while. Just after buying the Hauppauge HD-PVR and using the TME software did it start happening again. I guess I should've known it was the drivers with my past experience but since it worked OK with SageTV, I figured it was the TME software.

Thanks for pointing me in the driver direction and thanks for the recommendation for TSsniper. I downloaded it and will give it a try. I'm recording a football game this weekend to try it out on.

[fritzi93]

I'd get a blue screen with the error message "ATI2DVAG", which of course indicates the video card drivers. I just checked and currently have the 9-12 package, version 8.681.0.0, downloaded 3/2/2010, so apparently the last install was in March this year, no earlier. That's not all that bad, so long as one is alert to the possibility of drivers getting corrupted. My card does everything I need it to do, and was cheap, NewEgg special, ~$30 bucks.

TSSniper isn't any more frame accurate than H.264TS_Cutter, but cuts more cleanly, in my experience. It will seek *forward* to the nearest I frame. With a little practice one can make a fairly good transition if you look for the couple blank screen frames between content and adverts.

Yeah, when editing longish captures, there's the tendency to lose sync. I do just what you do to avoid it.

[unclebud]

FAME-Ring has smart cutter that works great. Try the portable version (no installation) It adds a watermark "FAME" in the first few frames and in the last few frames of the video (nothing in the middle). Or $40 gets you the clean version. I use it all the time to cut unwanted parts and it sews them up together. no sync issues. PS I don't work for them. Other TS cutters fail to work for me.

[DarrellS]

I just installed TSsniper and realized that I had this program before and deleted it. When I try and open a TS file, it gives me an error saying that directshow can't read the time codes.

[fritzi93]

I just installed TSsniper and realized that I had this program before and deleted it. When I try and open a TS file, it gives me an error saying that directshow can't read the time codes.

You need haali and ffdshow to use it, a DirectShow error almost certainly indicates a problem with one of the two.

[DarrellS]

I have both Haali and ffdshow although I do not use ffdshow to open H264 though. I have several H264 decoders on my system. I believe that DivX H264 decoder is used to decode H264. I have no problems with other programs opening the files. Virtualdub uses directshow input driver to open TS files.



EDIT: Had to go into Extras > Settings > Directshow > Haali Media Splitter (AR) and it now opens the files.

[fritzi93]

Some people need to re-set preferred splitter from "Automatic" to "Haali AR" in tsSniper settings. Maybe that would help. But tsSniper is a little touchy about decoders and splitters (like BDRB in that regard). You may feel it's not worth the trouble getting it to work with your current configuration.

Anyway, on my computer, H264TS_Cutter always produced ugly, noisy cuts. Does it work okay for you?

[EDIT] Okay, it should work now. Don't push it too hard or it will crash. Give it a couple seconds to seek the file when changing position on the timeline. I'd be interested in knowing your opinion of it versus H264TS_Cutter.

[DarrellS]

Looks like you beat me to my edit.

No. A lot of my cuts have pixelation or some weird kind of corruption. The other problem is shows like Palladia cut to commercial or returns from commercial without any kind of break (sometimes cutting off too early and coming back too late) so I miss a few seconds of the concert.

Might be worth paying for that Fame-Ring Smart Cutter to get exact frame editing. It's a lot cheaper than VideoRedo 4.

Speaking of cutting off to soon. I recorded a football game Saturady that I knew was going to run long so I recorded the show after the game also but I was still missing about 45 seconds of the game where the first recording ended and the second one started. I recorded the Fleetwood Mac concert on Palladia and it stopped recording a couple of minutes too soon.

I guess if you want to get a complete recording then you have to manually record it with the Hauppauge (and hope nothing goes wrong) but if you're recording late at night (1am to 6am) then the DVR prompts to go into disc saver mode and screws up your recording. Looks like the cable companies don't want you recording anything at all. You pay for 24 hours of uninterupted service and they only give you 18 hours.

[fritzi93]

I've done a number of PalladiaHD captures too, like Jeff Beck and Rush R30. Yeah, they always cut directly to the advert, which makes it harder. If you get a couple black frames in between, it's easy.

I use Scene Mode, clearing the compilation pane on the right first. That way you cut out what you want to keep and add it to the compilation. I've found that when you have a difficult cut to make, find the beginning of the scene and jump back one 200 ms step, and set mark in. Then find the end of the scene and beginning of the advert and make 3-4 backwards jumps, time interval set to 200 ms, and set mark out. Save to compilation. Oftentimes, it's spot on for the beginning and you lose maybe a frame or two at the end of the scene. You get better with practice. One could set different jump intervals, say 100 ms, but I learned to get it to work pretty well as above. I'm referring to the jump buttons on each end of the timeline, not the forward/reverse buttons under the preview pane.

Good luck.

[mail2tom]

Something to consider: Hauppauge has added support for Windows Media Center under Windows 7. Works nicely and outputs .wtv files. There's a wtv to mpg "howto" here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/325139-WTV-remux-to-MPG

Also, there's a fairly primitive capture capability using the Graphedit tool that I've used under Vista and Windows 7. It gets the job done for captures, but that's about it. The web page is:

http://blog.arogan.com/2008/06/hauppauge-hd-pvr-model-1212.html

[DarrellS]

I've done a number of PalladiaHD captures too, like Jeff Beck and Rush R30. Yeah, they always cut directly to the advert, which makes it harder. If you get a couple black frames in between, it's easy.

I use Scene Mode, clearing the compilation pane on the right first. That way you cut out what you want to keep and add it to the compilation. I've found that when you have a difficult cut to make, find the beginning of the scene and jump back one 200 ms step, and set mark in. Then find the end of the scene and beginning of the advert and make 3-4 backwards jumps, time interval set to 200 ms, and set mark out. Save to compilation. Oftentimes, it's spot on for the beginning and you lose maybe a frame or two at the end of the scene. You get better with practice. One could set different jump intervals, say 100 ms, but I learned to get it to work pretty well as above. I'm referring to the jump buttons on each end of the timeline, not the forward/reverse buttons under the preview pane.

Good luck.

Thanks for claritying the scene mode directions. I was ready to give up because I couldn't figure it out. Deleting the pane on the right solved my problem and allowed me to select the scene.

The problem that I had with H264TS Cutter was that there would be plenty enough black frames where I should've been able to make my cut and I would go back 3 or 4 more frames to be sure to get it right and it would still cut 4 or 5 frames into my scene. If I went back one more frame, then it would show the last frame of the commercial.

[fritzi93]

I can see why some folks would say to hell with it and look for a frame-accurate payware solution. I haven't tried any of those, so I just dunno. A couple hours learning tsSniper was sufficient for me to learn how to get acceptable results in removing adverts. [shrugs] I also occasionally do captures from Comcast's free HD movies on demand. With a few black frames front and back, one can get a nice clean cut that is all one could ask for.

To repeat, it seeks forward for an I frame. That's not too hard for a mark-in, even when you get a couple blended frames or an abrupt change like Palladia often does. For mark-out, you have to back up a few more jumps to avoid running too far. That's just how it behaves in actual practice.

Good luck.

[DarrellS]

I captured my football game last night and cut all the commercials. I got a good ts file that is perfectly in sync but when I try and put it in an mkv or mp4 container, then it gets out of sync. If I use gdsmux to create the mkv then it is only out of sync at the very end. If I try any other method then it is way out of sync throughout the whole file. I can't figure this one out. I tried to use the ffmpeg command to copy but it only creates about a two second file.

All the options that I used before that worked now give me an out of sync file.

[fritzi93]

Yeah, the longer the capture, the greater the odds for sync problems. Or perhaps I should say more edits increase the odds, I'm not certain. For a long TS file, I chop it in half first, then edit each one. Then combine the two by remuxing with tsMuxer to TS or AVCHD. That's almost always worked for me with HD-PVR captures. The couple times it didn't I suspect the culprit was an excessively fragmented editing drive.

[DarrellS]

I cut it up in pieces and put it back together but something didn't go right. I got a text file from Yamb I believe that said it was missing a bunch of frames. I assume where I made the cuts.

I already deleted the capture from my PC since the ts file was good. Guess I should've waited. I'm recapturing it right now.

[DarrellS]

I give up. It kept giving a file that was uncompatible with the other files. When I fainally got it put together, the end was in sync but the rest of the file was out of sync.

This was a crummy capture anyway from FSN which looked like a SD video upscaled to 1080i. I'm tired of wasting my time on it. I've got about 30 hours invested in it and it's crap. It would've been faster to just have re-encoded it in the first place and I'd have a file that was in sync and cut at all the right places without any glitches.

I guess I'm going to have to invest in VideoRedo if I want to do this right. I tried Smart Cutter on this capture also and it didn't help. I'm afraid to spend my money on VideoRedo though since I haven't seen any testimonials on whether it works or not.

I guess it's back to H264TS Cutter. TS Sniper was giving me corruption between cuts also but not quite as bad. I wished I could've gotten Smart Cutter to work for me since it does do frame accurate editing.

I'll keep experimenting on all three with other captures and see if I can get something working satisfactory. It may have just been a bad capture. I kept getting all kinds of interuptions from COX while trying to capture the file. It could've kept corrupting my capture. It almost seemed like COX was tracking what I was doing because everytime I tried to capture something, some kind of message would pop up to mess up my capture. "The DVR is fixing to go into disc saver mode", "this is a weeky something by your cable provider for Maricopa County bla bla bla" and "a recording is about to start on channel so and so". I'm about ready to take this DVR back and just do manual recordings from a normal HD STB. I won't have a backup incase the capture goes wrong but at least I won't have to deal with all these pop ups while I'm trying to record something.

[mail2tom]

I went through the same thing. The first time I tried using VideoRedoTVSuite (v4), got perfect results, I bought it. It wasn't cheap, but considering the consistent results I think it's money well spent.

I give up. It kept giving a file that was uncompatible with the other files. When I fainally got it put together, the end was in sync but the rest of the file was out of sync.

This was a crummy capture anyway from FSN which looked like a SD video upscaled to 1080i. I'm tired of wasting my time on it. I've got about 30 hours invested in it and it's crap. It would've been faster to just have re-encoded it in the first place and I'd have a file that was in sync and cut at all the right places without any glitches.

I guess I'm going to have to invest in VideoRedo if I want to do this right. I tried Smart Cutter on this capture also and it didn't help. I'm afraid to spend my money on VideoRedo though since I haven't seen any testimonials on whether it works or not.

I guess it's back to H264TS Cutter. TS Sniper was giving me corruption between cuts also but not quite as bad. I wished I could've gotten Smart Cutter to work for me since it does do frame accurate editing.

I'll keep experimenting on all three with other captures and see if I can get something working satisfactory. It may have just been a bad capture. I kept getting all kinds of interuptions from COX while trying to capture the file. It could've kept corrupting my capture. It almost seemed like COX was tracking what I was doing because everytime I tried to capture something, some kind of message would pop up to mess up my capture. "The DVR is fixing to go into disc saver mode", "this is a weeky something by your cable provider for Maricopa County bla bla bla" and "a recording is about to start on channel so and so". I'm about ready to take this DVR back and just do manual recordings from a normal HD STB. I won't have a backup incase the capture goes wrong but at least I won't have to deal with all these pop ups while I'm trying to record something.

[fritzi93]

Sounds like a bad capture alright. I capture manually from a ComCast HD set-top box and rarely have problems. Nevertheless, editing H.264 transport streams is a pain in the butt.

Maybe VideoReDo is the way to go for you. Good luck.

[DarrellS]

Figured out why my capture looked so bad. The FSN broadcast was pretty bad to begin with but I did a couple more with Smart Cutter that came out OK (still a little pixelated at one or two cut points) but the picture looked pretty bad. I checked my capture settings and somehow they had changed from Best 13.5 Mbps to 4.5 Mbps.

I saw encoder settings for the Hauppauge 1212 while googling that look nothing like the settings in TME. They have an option to capture at 720p and also to set the framerate to 60fps instead of 30fps. I think they used graphedit to get to the encoder settings but I don't see anything for Hauppauge encoder in graphstudio.

[jagabo]

I saw encoder settings for the Hauppauge 1212 while googling that look nothing like the settings in TME. They have an option to capture at 720p and also to set the framerate to 60fps instead of 30fps. I think they used graphedit to get to the encoder settings but I don't see anything for Hauppauge encoder in graphstudio.

The HD PVR can only capture with the same properties as the incoming video. 1080i is captured as 1080i, 720p is captured as 720p. It has no ability to convert one to the other.

[yoda313]

And to add to jagabo's post it can not do 1080p - just fyi.

[DarrellS]

Here is the webpage that explains how to set up captures using graphedit and a program that he created but it's all greek to me.

http://blog.arogan.com/2008/06/hauppauge-hd-pvr-model-1212.html

Some screencaps of the encoder settings...

[jagabo]

I saw encoder settings for the Hauppauge 1212 while googling that look nothing like the settings in TME. They have an option to capture at 720p and also to set the framerate to 60fps instead of 30fps. I think they used graphedit to get to the encoder settings but I don't see anything for Hauppauge encoder in graphstudio.

The Hauppuage HD PVR devices won't show up until the HD PVR is turned on and the USB cable plugged into the computer. In GraphStudio select Graph -> Insert Filter. Use the pulldown at the top left to select WDM Streaming Crossbar Devices, then add the Hauppauge HD PVR Crossbar. Use the pulldown to select WDM Streaming Capture Devices then add the Hauppuage HD PVR Capture device. Etc.

[SHS]

When dealing with Cable there not a lot you can do becuase of there carp super low steam bitrate or there poor set-top boxs that cable boardcaster do and used which dosen't help that one of the main reason why I perf Satellite over Cable.
DarrellS you need setup on your Cable Set-Top Box to output 720p there should be a setup menu option for that but beware min older Scientific Atlanta cable set-top boxs and other where set to only one output mode and that was 1080i no thank to dumb a@@ at cable companies the best thing to do is get latest model set-top box.

[DarrellS]

I guess since my WDTV will play ts files then I should stop trying to put them in an MKV container since that's where all the problems start. Every log file that I looked at tells me that the ts files are damaged but they play fine in MPC and my WDTV. It's when I try and demux the H264/AC3 files and mux them into an MKV or MP4 container that all the sync issues start. I'm not sure what is causing the damaged files or if it is just part of the game. I read somewhere that that's the case when trying to capture a transport stream.

What is strange is the way that I was doing it to begin with, with H264TS Cutter, I was able to get an in sync file but it was a lot of work using a lot of programs to get it to work. It just seems simpler to just leave them as ts files or pay for VideoRedo 4