Help! GraphStudio recording stopping randomly instead of on stop button

[ChaosMageX]

I am attempting to record television from the HDMI output of a DirecTV R22-100 DVR with lossless video compression using an Elgato Game Capture HD, indirectly connected through a ViewHD HDMI 1X2 Splitter VHD-1X2MN3D. Mainly I'm attempting to archive recordings I have on my DVR which are exclusive to television and cannot be purchased on home media and will likely never air on television again.

Unfortunately, my problem is that after starting the recording process on my computer, it will stop at completely random intervals instead of stopping when I want it to. The other weird thing is that the second timer never goes above zero, whether I'm using GraphStudio or GraphStudioNext:





These are the current settings for the DirectShow Filters in the graph:



Another weird thing that happens is that if I don't have the Stretch Standard Definition Input option enabled for the Elgato, the recording will not even begin, in that when I press the play button, the left timer stays on zero on GraphStudio and loops around in GraphStudioNext, always rolling over back to zero before it even gets to one second.

Despite stopping prematurely, the recordings do come out quite well, albeit much shorter than I want them to be. I am almost sure that this is a software issue, though the hardware could also be a factor, particularly the strain the recording process must put on the computer's 5400 RPM mechanical hard drive.

I am attempting to perform this video capture on a HP 15-F111DX laptop running Windows 8.1 with all the latest updates. It has a quad core 2.0 GHz AMD A8-6410 APU with integrated Radeon R5 Graphics and 8 GB of RAM. The laptop has not been physically upgraded or modified in any way, and I bought it brand new just two months ago, so it's practically fresh off the store shelf. However, if necessary for diagnosing the problem, I can provide a full manifest of all the software I have installed on it in the time I have owned it. For relevance, I will provide the list of all video related software currently installed on it, in order of installation date:

PCTV Systems TV Center 6.4.9.1033 (both software and drivers)
Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 HD Drivers (latest version? for Windows 8-8.1)
Graph Studio 0.3.2.0
K-Lite Codec Pack 11.0.5 - Mega Edition (including GraphStudioNext 0.7.0.430)
CCExtractor 0.76
Elgato Game Capture HD Software/Drivers 2.1
Media Info 0.7.72

I'm still very new to directly manipulating DirectShow graphs in order to record stuff from TV, so for all I know I'm probably making a mistake in the settings of one or more of the filters, which I don't yet know about but probably a lot of experienced people on this forum do know about. Could someone please help me fix the problem(s) with this graph so that it will run properly? I want it to stop recording when I tell it to stop, instead of stopping the recording randomly. I thank you in advance for your assistance.

[qz3fwd]

Hmm...Doesnt the elgato device capture the HDMI signal then hardware encode the uncompressed HDMI signal into compressed H.264+AAC out through the USB to your computer?
In other words, shouldnt your filter graph look more like elgato source filter->file writer to mkv,ts,whatever container you want?
Are you re-encoding needlessly in your graph? You just need to dump the harware encoders output to some container correct?

ie-Connect MPEG-TS output pin to file writer input pin?

[usually_quiet]

The stream encoded by the Elgato Game Capture HD can only be recorded by the included software, or EyeTV (OSX only).

According to a post made some time ago by another member here who has one, the Elgato Game Capture HD does not make its H.264 + AAC output stream available via any DirectShow filter. He said it only makes the decompressed audio and video from its H.264 + AAC output stream available via DirectShow. https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/360555-Is-there-any-other-software-that-s-compatibl...=1#post2284332

ChaosMageX is actually re-encoding the decompressed audio and video from the Elgato's H.264 + AAC output stream, not the original HDMI stream. In that case, using GraphStudio or GraphEdit with the Elgato Game Capture HD is not very useful for his purpose. He needs a different capture device.

[Edit]After further thought, I decided this post needed a bit more information.

USB 2.0's maximum data transfer rate is 60 megabytes per second.

The data transfer rate required for 8 bit @ 720 x 486 @ 29.97fps uncompressed video (no audio) is 20 MB per/sec. However, the data transfer rate required for 8 bit @ 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97fps uncompressed video (no audio) is 119 megabytes per second.

...which means the Elgato Game Capture HD can't supply uncompressed 1080i or 1080p HDMI video data to the PC, only compressed data. A USB 2.0 connection won't support anything else. The Elgato Game Capture HD could supply uncompressed SD video data over a USB 2.0 connection, but it is very doubtful that an HD capture device's drivers would treat HD and SD video differently.

ChaosMageX woull need an HDMI capture device with a USB 3.0 or PCI-e interface to have uncompressed video data available. Something like the Startech PEXHDCAP, BlackMagic Intensity Pro, or the AVerMedia C07 for PCI-e, or the Startech USB3HDCAP or AVerMedia Extreme Cap U3 for USB 3.0.

[ChaosMageX]

Thank you for the replies. Even if they didn't help solve the problem I'm having with GraphStudio, they still helped my general situation. I see now that I might have jumped the gun when purchasing a HDMI capture device. My second choice was the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Recorder, but I wasn't sure if it was capable of lossless H.264 compression, and I also don't like that it needs an external power source. Is the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition capable of internally performing lossless H.264 compression before sending the compressed stream to the computer?

If the Hauppauge isn't capable of losslessly compressing the stream before sending it to the computer, then I'll have to obtain either the StarTech USB3HDCAP or the AVerMedia Extreme Cap U3 CV710. The former seems to be able to capture from more types of input, but also seems to have faster processor requirements than the latter, so I'm worried my HP 15-F111DX might not have the processing power to handle using it, unless someone has managed to get it to work on a machine with a 2.0 GHz Quad Core processor. Luckily, the laptop has an AMD USB 3.0 Host Controller, which both are compatible with, so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

Unfortunately, another thing that made me apprehensive about the Hauppauge capture device, which is also making me apprehensive about these devices, is that they might also use the generic crossbar DirectShow filter. Like I said, I'm still new to all this, but the reason why I'm using GraphStudio/GraphStudioNext is that my ultimate goal is to record simultaneously from both my HDMI capture device and my Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 HD, which is connected to the analog S-Video output of my DirecTV R22-100 DVR, in order to create two synchronized recordings of the same video. I'm doing this because I am extracting the closed captioning data from the analog output using CCExtractor after the recording has finished, and I want the closed captioning data to be aligned with the lossless high definition recording.

I know, it's probably crazy, but I want to be able to make the synchronized recordings in order to save time by not having to record everything twice and then take the time to edit the closed captioning files to realign them with the high definition recording. If HDMI just supported a separate data stream for Closed Captioning rather than burning them into the image data, this wouldn't be necessary, but they don't, because HDMI doesn't care about people with hearing problems. I'm determined to make it work so that I can finally have recordings with high definition lossless video, high definition lossless audio, and a separate synchronized closed captioning data stream. But at this point, unless the Hauppauge is capable of lossless compression, I might have to get a more powerful computer to make it work.

[usually_quiet]

Thank you for the replies. Even if they didn't help solve the problem I'm having with GraphStudio, they still helped my general situation. I see now that I might have jumped the gun when purchasing a HDMI capture device. My second choice was the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition Recorder, but I wasn't sure if it was capable of lossless H.264 compression, and I also don't like that it needs an external power source. Is the Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition capable of internally performing lossless H.264 compression before sending the compressed stream to the computer?

All HDMI HD capture devices that hardwware encode to H.264, including anything made by Hauppauge or Elgato, are designed to use lossy H.264 compression so that capture files are not very large.

If the Hauppauge isn't capable of losslessly compressing the stream before sending it to the computer, then I'll have to obtain either the StarTech USB3HDCAP or the AVerMedia Extreme Cap U3 CV710. The former seems to be able to capture from more types of input, but also seems to have faster processor requirements than the latter, so I'm worried my HP 15-F111DX might not have the processing power to handle using it, unless someone has managed to get it to work on a machine with a 2.0 GHz Quad Core processor. Luckily, the laptop has an AMD USB 3.0 Host Controller, which both are compatible with, so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

You also need to make sure that the USB 3.0 port is capable of operating at SuperSpeed. Download USBTreeView, connect a USB 3.0 hard drive drive and verify that the connection is able to provide SuperSpeed

The published minimum PC hardware requirements for a capture device definitely apply when running the provided capture software, and it is a good idea to exceed them. People can succeed in using the same device with a slightly lower spec PC when running different capture software and applying lossless compression, but there are no guarantees.

Unfortunately, another thing that made me apprehensive about the Hauppauge capture device, which is also making me apprehensive about these devices, is that they might also use the generic crossbar DirectShow filter. Like I said, I'm still new to all this, but the reason why I'm using GraphStudio/GraphStudioNext is that my ultimate goal is to record simultaneously from both my HDMI capture device and my Diamond ATI TV Wonder 750 HD, which is connected to the analog S-Video output of my DirecTV R22-100 DVR, in order to create two synchronized recordings of the same video. I'm doing this because I am extracting the closed captioning data from the analog output using CCExtractor after the recording has finished, and I want the closed captioning data to be aligned with the lossless high definition recording.

I know, it's probably crazy, but I want to be able to make the synchronized recordings in order to save time by not having to record everything twice and then take the time to edit the closed captioning files to realign them with the high definition recording. If HDMI just supported a separate data stream for Closed Captioning rather than burning them into the image data, this wouldn't be necessary, but they don't, because HDMI doesn't care about people with hearing problems. I'm determined to make it work so that I can finally have recordings with high definition lossless video, high definition lossless audio, and a separate synchronized closed captioning data stream. But at this point, unless the Hauppauge is capable of lossless compression, I might have to get a more powerful computer to make it work.

As far as HDMI not providing closed caption data, remember that no other HD capable video connection can provide them either. Plus, the type of closed closed captions you want to record are basically restricted to N. America, and are legally required only for TV broadcasts. Other countries use other closed captioning systems for DTV, sometimes a digital version of teletext, and sometimes sub-picture based, similar to DVD subtitles.

This being the case, when we entered the HDTV/digital broadcast era, it was decided that the device responsible for tuning the broadcast TV signal carrying closed captions would have to be be responsible for overlaying DTV closed captions on the picture.

Finally, even if N. American closed caption data were provided in all HD video signals, capture devices are not required to capture them and you are surely aware that many SD analog capture devices do not.

So yes, if someone is deaf or hard of hearing and really needs to use captions, it is necessary to turn on the set top box's closed caption decoding and record open captions with the HDMI capture device or attempt to do as you are doing.