HD Capture Device that WILL Smart Render in TMPGENC Authoring Works

[cp2k]

The title says it all.. I'm looking for a component HD capture device for a pc (or Mac) that WILL produce captures that can Smart Render in TMPGEnc's authoring works to capture material from my DirecTV DVR. None of the HD-PVR variety I've tried will produce anything that it will work with

[LMotlow]

Which HD PVR's have you tried?
Do you get an error message when you try to author a disc? If so, what is does the message say?
Most of the HD PVRs out there will make an HD capture that can be smart rendered, but in one way or other they're not strictly BluRay compliant -- invalid GOP size, or other factors that don't match BD spec. Smart Rendering and authoring are two different operations. What they produce is closer to AVCHD than BluRay.

[cp2k]

I've tried the original HD-PVR and the HD PVR Rocket. Neither produce files that will Smart Render in TMPGEnc authoring works. It will of course re-encode, but that takes forever. I also tried a similar product from AverMedia.

[LMotlow]

I don't think you get the point. Smart rendering is not the basic reason for the existence of Authoring Works. It has that featrure to allow you to cut out commercials, leading and training preview, that sort of thing. But smart-rendering in itself doesn't make a video BluRay compliant for authoring. Those are two different considerations.

TVAW is not a one-stop-shopping, all-in-one, read-my-mind NLE. It's an authoring program that lets you make a few simple edits. But if you feed it non-compliant video it has to be re-encoded to spec for BluRay authoring. Is it a little more clear now? Edit? Author? Two different things.

If all you want is smart rendering for a new HD ts file, try TMPGEnc Smart Renderer or Sony Movie Studio, or VideoReDo-HD. VRD-HD can smart render just about anything, but it's not an authoring program. All these apps have free trials.

Every PVR I've heard of captures copy protected HD in a form that makes it tough for you to get from capture to authored disc in one step. Those days died with VCRs. In the land of the free, you're not allowed to have personal, copy-able copies of protected video anyway, despite the Fair Use Act. Now you know what the digital transition was really about, which had nothing to do with your convenience. You can try someone else's PVR, but any outfit that makes it easy for you to use it like your old VCR would be hauled into court and closed down pronto. You'll also find that some smart-rendering and demux/remux apps adhere more strictly to format specs than others do. I've made simple edit and cuts in a lot of HD recordings, but most of them are archived on external HDD's as AVCHD.

Try the VideoReDo trial. Then try an authoring app separately. I've smart-rendered edits with VRD many times, but that doesn't make them compatible for some authoring programs or formats.

[usually_quiet]

The title says it all.. I'm looking for a component HD capture device for a pc (or Mac) that WILL produce captures that can Smart Render in TMPGEnc's authoring works to capture material from my DirecTV DVR. None of the HD-PVR variety I've tried will produce anything that it will work with

You might need an HD capture device that uses software encoding to have enough control over all encoding parameters to guarantee Blu-Ray compliance. ...but that might not be enough.

There are consumer authoring programs which re-encode video sources for compliance even if they are already compliant. As a test, you could rip a commercial Blu-Ray disc with MakeMKV to have a known compliant source, then author it with TAW to see if it accepts a compliant source for authoring without re-encoding.

I never author Blu-Ray from my captures. I just burn my edited files to BD-R as data. My mother's Blu-Ray player has a built-in media player which can play the data files, if I record something for her. I use a computer to play them, so it doesn't matter if they are authored or not.