Loseless Video Capture from Virgin Media V+ HD box

[usually_quiet]

The AverMedia EzRecorder 130 is still new enough that there isn't much information about the common problems users may have with it. The AverMedia EzRecorder 130 is supposed to have similarities with the AVermdia Game Capture HD II. I found the following advice in AVerMedia's support section among the FAQs for the AVermdia Game Capture HD II:

Game Capture HD ii fails to detect my storage device. What do I do?

1. Try re-installing the storage device. It may take longer for Game Capture HD II to detect the storage device if there are too many files in the disk.

'2. Format your storage device to NTFS file system on PC. We recommend using "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool"
http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html

I hope that #1 works.

[Master Tape]

Must be something wrong with the USB cable, as even the laptop is not recognising it. I don't understand, it was fine the other night.

[usually_quiet]

Must be something wrong with the USB cable, as even the laptop is not recognising it. I don't understand, it was fine the other night.

I hope you are right. If not, something could be wrong with the HDD enclosure, or the drive itself.

[Master Tape]

Opened it up.. turns out the HDD came loose and the connectors weren't touching that of the enclosures. Pushed it back in, all working fine now

[usually_quiet]

Out of curiosity, if you have used the EZ Recorder 130 enough to form an opinion regarding the quality of its recordings, are they good, bad, or just acceptable? Was the frame rate problem adequately resolved by following jagabo's advice?

[Master Tape]

Out of curiosity, if you have used the EZ Recorder 130 enough to form an opinion regarding the quality of its recordings, are they good, bad, or just acceptable? Was the frame rate problem adequately resolved by following jagabo's advice?

Oh yes the picture quality is great when set to optimal, maybe about 10-15% loss, but it's barely noticeable. To be honest having viewed back the footage on the box, i haven't noticed anything different about the frame rate itself, it was identical to the original recording. It must be counting the number of fields as you mentioned.

However i've just encountered another bad problem. The Ez Recorder states there is no video or audio signal. Having checked the HDMI splitter, none of the red lights are coming on besides the power one. More oddly, when a HDMI cable is connected to a powered on device, with the splitter unplugged, it stays powered on.

Checked all the cables and they're fine, so must be a problem with the splitter itself. This is all i need :/

[usually_quiet]

Sometimes power-cycling the splitter works. Disconnect the splitter from its power supply and unplug the HDMI cables. Let it sit for a day to allow any residual charge in the circuits to dissipate, then plug everyting back in. If this doesn't work, then you were unlucky and received a splitter that was destined to suffer infant death. For what it is worth, I had my ViewHD mini splitter continuously powered on for months without a problem.

[Master Tape]

Thanks, will try that. If all else fails then i'll have to get another one quickly, this one should hopefully be under warranty anyway.

[usually_quiet]

If you are interested, one of our members posted information in another thread indicating that it's possible to disable HDCP by installing a jumper inside the EzRecorder 130 that connects 2 pins on a header. The only difficulty is that the narration explaining the process is in Portuguese, so its hard to figure out what sort of jumper is needed. https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/374044-Video-Quality-of-AVerMedia-vs-Hauppauge-vs-O...=1#post2410735

I hope that Claudio can provide the missing information.

[jagabo]

In the video it looks like a standard 1/10 inch jumper:



Compare the spacing of the pins to the open through holes a little to the left -- those are obviously 1/10 inch spacing. And 5 of them are the same width as the USB connector on the left -- 1/2 inch.

http://www.amazon.com/2-54mm-Standard-Computer-Jumper-100pack/dp/B00N552DWK/

If you have any old ISA, AGP, PCI, etc. cards sitting around you probably have one already. You can even take the CMOS discharge jumper off a motherboard. Any PC repair shop will probably just give you one. Or if you're brave you can just wind a little bare wire around the pins.

[xara]

The video also states that a firmware update (not official) is required after installing the jumper.
They provide a link to the update (1.0.2) that must be renamed to .bin and installed via USB pendrive.

There is no information if the new firmware works when removing the jumper.

[Cauptain]

On new board EZ130 revisions, the jumpers are out. Not possible enable HDCP remover firmware.




Claudio

[jagabo]

On new board EZ130 revisions, the jumpers are out.

Are you saying the new boards no long have the pins? Are the through holes still there? If so, you can solder pins in the holes or just bridge the holes with solder. Will the firmware update work then?

[Cauptain]

On new board EZ130 revisions, the jumpers are out.

Are you saying the new boards no long have the pins? Are the through holes still there? If so, you can solder pins in the holes or just bridge the holes with solder. Will the firmware update work then?

Yes Jagabo.

I contacted an owner of a new version of that card and asked him to take a picture and send me. Unanswered so far.



Claudio

[usually_quiet]

I'm sorry I brought it up as a possible solution for Master Tape, since apparently the hardware part of this exploit was already disabled by AVerMedia before the details of the exploit were posted here. Jumpering pins is one thing. That is very easy to do and easily reversible if necessary. Soldering is harder and not easily reversible.

[Master Tape]

Sorry to bump up my old thread, was going to make a new one but thought it'd be best to retain continuity as it concerns the AverMedia recorder. I've since converted all of my shows from the Virgin box, but now i have a BT YouView box full of recordings! It's basically a Freeview PVR. I only noticed the other day that the AverMedia compression mode is 'Lossy'. Is there no way to capture 'Loseless' with it, or is it always lossy due to it saving the files as MP4s? I want to be able to archive my recordings in the best quality possible.

[usually_quiet]

Sorry to bump up my old thread, was going to make a new one but thought it'd be best to retain continuity as it concerns the AverMedia recorder. I've since converted all of my shows from the Virgin box, but now i have a BT YouView box full of recordings! It's basically a Freeview PVR. I only noticed the other day that the AverMedia compression mode is 'Lossy'. Is there no way to capture 'Loseless' with it, or is it always lossy due to it saving the files as MP4s? I want to be able to archive my recordings in the best quality possible.

It isn't possible to capture losslessly with the EzRecorder 130. Its H.264 encoder doesn't provide lossless H.264 encoding.

Capturing losslessly would be possible if you were willing to buy a different capture device and a new desktop computer, maybe an SSD for capture, and on the order of 10-12 times as much storage. (As jagabo mentioned earlier in this thread, losslessly encoded HD video consumes on the order of 100GB per hour.)

[Master Tape]

Sorry to bump up my old thread, was going to make a new one but thought it'd be best to retain continuity as it concerns the AverMedia recorder. I've since converted all of my shows from the Virgin box, but now i have a BT YouView box full of recordings! It's basically a Freeview PVR. I only noticed the other day that the AverMedia compression mode is 'Lossy'. Is there no way to capture 'Loseless' with it, or is it always lossy due to it saving the files as MP4s? I want to be able to archive my recordings in the best quality possible.

It isn't possible to capture losslessly with the EzRecorder 130. Its H.264 encoder doesn't provide lossless H.264 encoding.

Capturing losslessly would be possible if you were willing to buy a different capture device and a new desktop computer, maybe an SSD for capture, and on the order of 10-12 times as much storage. (As jagabo mentioned earlier in this thread, losslessly encoded HD video consumes on the order of 100GB per hour.)

I'm almost in the process of building a capturing rig for analog video, so don't want to build yet another one for capturing digital video. I already have a gaming pc which cost me over £1000 to build so i could probably get a good capture card for that, as want to archive the files onto say Blu-rays discs. What media format is Freeview broadcast in anyway? I know some level of compression must be going on their end, so to transfer to a video format that matches it without bloating it to an astronomical file size would be ideal (Much like when you render a video file in MP4 to upload to Youtube so there will be less processing going on as that's the file they convert it too, or used to anyway..)

Also the majority of the recordings on my Youview box are from an SD channel, if that helps matters.

[Master Tape]

you might try this..just plug in an external drive for saving the video files

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Cloner-need-Capture-streaming-videos/dp/B00TF9MCXU

Master Tape wants to come as close to the original as he can. Does this box record 1080i video as 1080i?

Most of the stand-alone boxes don't record interlaced video as interlaced, and when they de-interlace they discard half the frames. For example, 1080i50 will be recorded as 1080p25 not 1080i50 or 1080p50 as many would prefer.

The AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable (lgp) mentioned above by ezcapper would record 1080i50 as 1080p25, and half the video frames that a TV would display will be discarded, leaving jerkier video.

A lot of players will attempt to play the video at 50 fps, displaying each frame twice. When bob deinterlacing they will output 100 fields per second. But since interlaced frames were duplicated before bobbing you get very fast back-and-forth motion. Ie, instead of fields being played back in order, 1, 2, 3, 4... at 50 fields per second you get 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4... at 100 fields per second. That's fast enough that it just looks blurry and flickery. And most players can't bob to 100 fps (or 120 fps for NTSC) so you get jerky playback as frames are skipped in an attempt to keep the running time.

This confusion comes about because marketing people renamed 25i to 50i (and 30i to 60i) just because it sounds better. Then, probably because users started complaining that their "50i" camcorder produced files that MediaInfo (and other programs) reported as 25i, they started marking the actual video files 50i.

Now this is an interesting thing. When i transferred the files over to my PC, then played them in say VLC player and stream my desktop over HDMI to view on my tv, the video looks noticeably jerkier, which is highly annoying. Don't know if it's the media player not being able to keep up with the frames as mentioned. The only way i can view it with it's full original smoothness (as it was broadcast) is playing back the video files through the AverMedia EzRecorder 130 recorder when connected to my tv. The files are still 1080i50, so not sure what's going on there.

I just want to be able to archive the files to Blu-ray discs for viewing on tv (rather than streaming over) Would this eliminate the jerkiness problem?

[dellsam34]

Since you mentioned that you have a freeview box I would assume the files inside are not encrypted can't you try to transfer them from your box's hard drive to computer?

[Master Tape]

Since you mentioned that you have a freeview box I would assume the files inside are not encrypted can't you try to transfer them from your box's hard drive to computer?

I don't think the BT YouView box is a Freeview box as it doesn't conform to the previous Humax Freeview specs. It has the option of subscription channels, but i don't bother with those, i just got it for the freeview channels and PVR capabilities.

[usually_quiet]

you might try this..just plug in an external drive for saving the video files

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-Cloner-need-Capture-streaming-videos/dp/B00TF9MCXU

Master Tape wants to come as close to the original as he can. Does this box record 1080i video as 1080i?

Most of the stand-alone boxes don't record interlaced video as interlaced, and when they de-interlace they discard half the frames. For example, 1080i50 will be recorded as 1080p25 not 1080i50 or 1080p50 as many would prefer.

The AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable (lgp) mentioned above by ezcapper would record 1080i50 as 1080p25, and half the video frames that a TV would display will be discarded, leaving jerkier video.

A lot of players will attempt to play the video at 50 fps, displaying each frame twice. When bob deinterlacing they will output 100 fields per second. But since interlaced frames were duplicated before bobbing you get very fast back-and-forth motion. Ie, instead of fields being played back in order, 1, 2, 3, 4... at 50 fields per second you get 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4... at 100 fields per second. That's fast enough that it just looks blurry and flickery. And most players can't bob to 100 fps (or 120 fps for NTSC) so you get jerky playback as frames are skipped in an attempt to keep the running time.

This confusion comes about because marketing people renamed 25i to 50i (and 30i to 60i) just because it sounds better. Then, probably because users started complaining that their "50i" camcorder produced files that MediaInfo (and other programs) reported as 25i, they started marking the actual video files 50i.

Now this is an interesting thing. When i transferred the files over to my PC, then played them in say VLC player and stream my desktop over HDMI to view on my tv, the video looks noticeably jerkier, which is highly annoying. Don't know if it's the media player not being able to keep up with the frames as mentioned. The only way i can view it with it's full original smoothness (as it was broadcast) is playing back the video files through the AverMedia EzRecorder 130 recorder when connected to my tv. The files are still 1080i50, so not sure what's going on there.

I just want to be able to archive the files to Blu-ray discs for viewing on tv (rather than streaming over) Would this eliminate the jerkiness problem?

As you observed, the EzRecorder 130 flags the video headers for interlaced (1080i, 480i, 576i) mp4 files with the field rate, not the frame rate. Editing software and most players expect the frame rate and usually don't know how to process it correctly. The fix is to use My MP4Box GUI to demux the audio and video streams, then remux them with the frame rate set to half the field rate. (There are 2 fields per frame in interlaced video) That way 50/59.94 fields per second will be corrected to 25/29.97 frames per second in the remultiplexed video. (jagabo provided this fix in another thread. It took me some time to find it again.)

[usually_quiet]

I'm almost in the process of building a capturing rig for analog video, so don't want to build yet another one for capturing digital video. I already have a gaming pc which cost me over £1000 to build so i could probably get a good capture card for that, as want to archive the files onto say Blu-rays discs. What media format is Freeview broadcast in anyway? I know some level of compression must be going on their end, so to transfer to a video format that matches it without bloating it to an astronomical file size would be ideal (Much like when you render a video file in MP4 to upload to Youtube so there will be less processing going on as that's the file they convert it too, or used to anyway..)

Also the majority of the recordings on my Youview box are from an SD channel, if that helps matters.

Originally, Freeview broadcasts in the UK used MPEG-2. I don't know if that might have changed. Freeview HD broadcasts used AVC from the beginning.

I'm struggling to find good HDMI capture devices for you that capture both SD and HD and supply uncompressed video. The newest consumer capture devices tend to only provide information about the highest resolution they support, "up to 1080p60" or "up to 2160p60", because that is all the gamers who buy them seem to care about.

I did find one that looks promising. The AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme GC550 lists the following information: Maximum Capture Resolution: Uncompressed 1080p60 (60 Mbps) Supported Resolution: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i

[Master Tape]

As you observed, the EzRecorder 130 flags the video headers for interlaced (1080i, 480i, 576i) mp4 files with the field rate, not the frame rate. Editing software and most players expect the frame rate and usually don't know how to process it correctly. The fix is to use My MP4Box GUI to demux the audio and video streams, then remux them with the frame rate set to half the field rate. (There are 2 fields per frame in interlaced video) That way 50/59.94 fields per second will be corrected to 25/29.97 frames per second in the remultiplexed video. (jagabo provided this fix in another thread. It took me some time to find it again.)

Thanks, i've tried that, but the muxed file is still flagging up as 50 frames.

I'm almost in the process of building a capturing rig for analog video, so don't want to build yet another one for capturing digital video. I already have a gaming pc which cost me over £1000 to build so i could probably get a good capture card for that, as want to archive the files onto say Blu-rays discs. What media format is Freeview broadcast in anyway? I know some level of compression must be going on their end, so to transfer to a video format that matches it without bloating it to an astronomical file size would be ideal (Much like when you render a video file in MP4 to upload to Youtube so there will be less processing going on as that's the file they convert it too, or used to anyway..)

Also the majority of the recordings on my Youview box are from an SD channel, if that helps matters.

Originally, Freeview broadcasts in the UK used MPEG-2. I don't know if that might have changed. Freeview HD broadcasts used AVC from the beginning.

I'm struggling to find good HDMI capture devices for you that capture both SD and HD and supply uncompressed video. The newest consumer capture devices tend to only provide information about the highest resolution they support, "up to 1080p60" or "up to 2160p60", because that is all the gamers who buy them seem to care about.

I did find one that looks promising. The AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme GC550 lists the following information: Maximum Capture Resolution: Uncompressed 1080p60 (60 Mbps) Supported Resolution: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i

That looks appealing, does it capture uncompressed at 25i or 50i? Even a HDMI device that captures in 576i would do, as that's the commercially unavailable tv shows i want to archive, though i imagine such a thing doesn't exist. Better still i wonder if there's some way to decrypt the recordings on the box and get the files to my computer?

[usually_quiet]

As you observed, the EzRecorder 130 flags the video headers for interlaced (1080i, 480i, 576i) mp4 files with the field rate, not the frame rate. Editing software and most players expect the frame rate and usually don't know how to process it correctly. The fix is to use My MP4Box GUI to demux the audio and video streams, then remux them with the frame rate set to half the field rate. (There are 2 fields per frame in interlaced video) That way 50/59.94 fields per second will be corrected to 25/29.97 frames per second in the remultiplexed video. (jagabo provided this fix in another thread. It took me some time to find it again.)

Thanks, i've tried that, but the muxed file is still flagging up as 50 frames.

Even after changing the frame rate to 25i for the remux? What are you using to check the frame rate? Not VLC, I hope. VLC always reports the field rate for interlaced video. MediaInfo is more accurate.

TSMuxer GUI also appears to be able to change the frame rate if you are OK with a transport stream.

I'm struggling to find good HDMI capture devices for you that capture both SD and HD and supply uncompressed video. The newest consumer capture devices tend to only provide information about the highest resolution they support, "up to 1080p60" or "up to 2160p60", because that is all the gamers who buy them seem to care about.

I did find one that looks promising. The AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme GC550 lists the following information: Maximum Capture Resolution: Uncompressed 1080p60 (60 Mbps) Supported Resolution: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, 480i

That looks appealing, does it capture uncompressed at 25i or 50i? Even a HDMI device that captures in 576i would do, as that's the commercially unavailable tv shows i want to archive, though i imagine such a thing doesn't exist. Better still i wonder if there's some way to decrypt the recordings on the box and get the files to my computer?

I don't know if AVerMedia capture devices which provide uncompressed output designate it as 50 fps or 25 fps. The frame rate might be set by the capture software and software encoder. If so, third-party sofware and encoders will most likely use the right frame rate.

It is very unlikely that you will be able to find a way to decrypt encrypted recordings stored on the recorder's hard drive.