VideoReDo TVSuite & Professional - General Discussion Thread

[Marayong]

Thanks Stez. I don't want to use NVEnc given the reported issues. I wanted to make sure I wasn't inadvertently using it. It would appear not. I hope.

[Stez]

Thanks Stez. I don't want to use NVEnc given the reported issues. I wanted to make sure I wasn't inadvertently using it. It would appear not. I hope.

All good, as Bridgy said, you shouldn't have any issues unless you re-intsall VRD and choose NVEnc during the install wizard.

As an aside, I don't think VRD is capable of using modern on board GPUs as no matter what settings I choose, I can't get it to hand anything off to my Radeon iGPU. I've been experimenting and then watching Performance Monitor to see whether it's using a GPU or the CPU and no matter what I do, it's using CPU encoding.

No doubt there will come a time when we can't run VRD at all (other than a VM running a legacy OS) so I'm just enjoying it while I've still got it.

[cp2]

I am running VRD using Win11 Pro with a i7-13700 processor and 16gb of RAM. No other GPU is installed.
QuickSync is set to hardware and it seems to be working as when I encode a H264 source to H265 the GPU usage climbs to around 75%.
Just about all of the files that I process in VRD start out as AVC with occasional forays into MPEG2. I process and check the file using H264 and when I happy with the result reprocess the original file into H265 to give me a smaller output file (Intelligent Recode setting).
I am therefore able to compare the output statistics of H264 vs H265.
For a programme of 60 minutes of AVC H264 produces a 2621MB file, taking 28secs at 4732.61 fps
The H265 output takes a lot longer but gives an output file of 1741MB, taking 1266 secs at 104.67fps.
Before I upgraded from Win10/8th generation chip my times were longer.
Whilst a separate graphics card may well offer even faster processing times it wouldn’t be an option for me. Besides it now seems that evolving GPU updates could cut me off from hardware use anyway.
My output files come mainly from Freesat and Freeview, technology which is continually cited as “obsolete” but I’m hopeful that it will still be available for a while yet. However, my video capture hardware seems happy enough handling the Internet streaming services I also use.

[Bridgy]

As an aside, I don't think VRD is capable of using modern on board GPUs as no matter what settings I choose, I can't get it to hand anything off to my Radeon iGPU.

I am positive that Dan Rosen told me that he never developed any support in VRD for the old AMD/Radeon VCE hardware encoder, nor the VCN that came after VCE, only NVEnc and QuickSync, and i am sure that he didn't want to work with VCE because it was not very good at doing what it was meant to do, this was back many years ago now.

I am running VRD using Win11 Pro with a i7-13700 processor and 16gb of RAM. No other GPU is installed.
QuickSync is set to hardware and it seems to be working as when I encode a H264 source to H265 the GPU usage climbs to around 75%.
Just about all of the files that I process in VRD start out as AVC with occasional forays into MPEG2. I process and check the file using H264 and when I happy with the result reprocess the original file into H265 to give me a smaller output file (Intelligent Recode setting).
I am therefore able to compare the output statistics of H264 vs H265.
For a programme of 60 minutes of AVC H264 produces a 2621MB file, taking 28secs at 4732.61 fps
The H265 output takes a lot longer but gives an output file of 1741MB, taking 1266 secs at 104.67fps.

Can i ask what Resolution and frame rates your source/export files are for those fairly fast processing times, and what kind of bitrates are they on average.

QuickSync is, or it was the fastest form of encoding for many years and i even used it when i was using the old TMPGEnc Express 4.0 to do my editing and encoding work.

NVEnc got to become fairly good as well, but after my days with TMPGEnc and moving to VRD Pro in 2013 i always used software encoding, although i have tested QuickSync with some of my 4k/60p HEVC camera files and it is faster than doing software encoding with my Ultra 7 265 CPU and 16gb of ram in my new Dell Pro Max.

[cp2]

As an aside, I don't think VRD is capable of using modern on board GPUs as no matter what settings I choose, I can't get it to hand anything off to my Radeon iGPU.

I am positive that Dan Rosen told me that he never developed any support in VRD for the old AMD/Radeon VCE hardware encoder, nor the VCN that came after VCE, only NVEnc and QuickSync, and i am sure that he didn't want to work with VCE because it was not very good at doing what it was meant to do, this was back many years ago now.

I am running VRD using Win11 Pro with a i7-13700 processor and 16gb of RAM. No other GPU is installed.
QuickSync is set to hardware and it seems to be working as when I encode a H264 source to H265 the GPU usage climbs to around 75%.
Just about all of the files that I process in VRD start out as AVC with occasional forays into MPEG2. I process and check the file using H264 and when I happy with the result reprocess the original file into H265 to give me a smaller output file (Intelligent Recode setting).
I am therefore able to compare the output statistics of H264 vs H265.
For a programme of 60 minutes of AVC H264 produces a 2621MB file, taking 28secs at 4732.61 fps
The H265 output takes a lot longer but gives an output file of 1741MB, taking 1266 secs at 104.67fps.

Can i ask what Resolution and frame rates your source/export files are for those fairly fast processing times, and what kind of bitrates are they on average.

QuickSync is, or it was the fastest form of encoding for many years and i even used it when i was using the old TMPGEnc Express 4.0 to do my editing and encoding work.

NVEnc got to become fairly good as well, but after my days with TMPGEnc and moving to VRD Pro in 2013 i always used software encoding, although i have tested QuickSync with some of my 4k/60p HEVC camera files and it is faster than doing software encoding with my Ultra 7 265 CPU and 16gb of ram in my new Dell Pro Max.

The resolution is 1920x1080 , the H264 file averages 3.33 Mbps being from an FTA BBC Freesat channel recorded from a PCie satellite card (Hauppauge/ DVBViewer) The H264 version averaged 2.03 Mbps.
From the original file:
[Stats]
Errors=2
Size=2.78 GB (2981140440 bytes)
Avr. Datarate=0.495 MB/s
Device=Hauppauge WinTV 885 Alt BDA Tuner/Demod (1)

Incidentally, I recorded the same programme on my PCie terrestrial tuner but did not need to use it
[Stats]
Errors=0
Size=2.44 GB (2617060204 bytes)
Avr. Datarate=0.434 MB/s
Device=7231 BDA DVBT Tuner (3)
Still 1920x1080 but DVB-T2 rather than DVB-S2.

[Marayong]

For the record, I mostly use VRD with video recorded via a Hauppauge Colossus2, which records 1920x1080 frame size, 50 fps & a bitrate of about 4200kbps, although if I wanted I could crank the bitrate up to around 20,000, but that's far more than the source broadcast. Input is a cable tv set top box via a splitter which removes DRM (the use of a splitter to bypass DRM came from the FAQ page on the cable tv's own website and the Colossus2 was recommended by one of their technicians when we had the box upgraded to a new model). Recording is as a ts stream which VRD happily opens & saves as mp4. I also have a USB tv receiver for recording FTA broadcasts, if I need to, tho' it's easier to get those via the cable tv box which also carries all the FTA channels. All old technology, the Colossus2 dates back to the early 2010s, although Hauppauge still sell it and it hasn’t been superseded so technically it's current tech. The USB TV turner is pre-2010 tech, latest driver is Win8, so not ideal .... but I've not used it to record anything on my current desktop. I briefly fired it up after upgrading to Win11 and it still works, tho' I get an error message that the remote control is not supported. Given I dont use the remote and I dont even have the receiver installed on the pc, that's an easy to ignore error. The error didn't show up in Win7 or Win10, so it must be a W11 thing. Actually the last time I used it was exactly 1 year ago ... I fired it up to have the ABC running live on one of the pc monitors so we could switch to it on the tv just before the fireworks.

Oh, and the other use I have for VRD is occasionally editing videos I've recorded on my phone, but I've made sure the settings on the phone ensure the resulting videos are compatible with VRD. I don't need 8K or even 4K video there, especially since most of these edited videos are sent to family overseas via dropbox so size is more important than quality.

All in all, the only things I have to worry about with VRD in the future are os & pc hardware driver updates that may break VRD ... and if that ever happens, I'll create a W7 VM and use that for VRD. I'd pick W7 since I have a Win7 licence I could use for the VM. I've still got an image of my previous Win7 machine, so I could even try mounting that in a VM, so there'd be no need to activate VRD, although Win7 can be fussy about changed hardware. Otherwise I could try an image of my current pc when it was W10. Since the VM would not have internet (a SOP security approach for an EOL os running in a VM), the W10 in the VM would not know the licence was also being used for the host W11 machine.

I use VRD to remove adverts and also any material before and after the program itself. Occasionally I'll snippet out a brief part of a recorded (or downloaded) show using VRD. Did that a few days ago to cut out a song in a carols broadcast ... one of the singers was a relative and family overseas wanted to see just that song, so I snipped it out with VRD and put it up on dropbox for them to download.

Given that FTA broadcast technology is mature and unlikely to change in the near to somewhat more distant future and ditto for the cable tv service technology, using old tech on my end is perfectly reasonable and there's no need to upgrade my tech. We're unlikely going to get FTA 4K broadcasts simply because of the bandwidth demand - it's more profitable for a broadcaster to use their available bandwidth to broadcast two or more different channels than to broadcast one 4K channel. Ditto for cable tv, especially if it's from a satellite broadcast. The limits here are not technology but physics. If anything, the FTA broadcast signals here are of lower quality than they were 25 years ago, with many networks decreasing both bitrate and frame sizes for streamed and broadcast. And with more and more people streaming to their phones rather than big tvs, even streaming services have little incentive to increase their framesizes & bitrates.

[cp2]

Marayong..
As you might have gathered my setup is similar to you, a zombie Colossus 2 with a HDMI splitter. However, I can add a zombie Hauppauge Starburst PCie satellite tuner. I can only think that Hauppauge are selling from stock or perhaps doing some batch production runs. It can't last and nobody else seems to be rushing it to offer alternatives.
I can add a Blackgold PCie twin DVB-T2 tuner card which is well and truly obsolete, being some 14 years old. Blackgold is a long time gone though.
Blackgold were an interesting company who offered a range of satellite and terrestrial tuner cards, half height and two different size backplates. They had problems - tuners kept "disappearing" and there indications that they had overheating problems. I was lucky enough to resolve the driver issues and it has survived, along with my other cards, as I transferred them to new PCs and upgraded Windows OS versions.
Blackgold brought out what seemed to be the pinnacle of their achievements, a half height card with 2 DVB-S2 connections and a twin DVB-T2 tuner. It was rather expensive and being a little wary by experience I decided to hold back and wait for reviews and usee feedback. This convinced me not to buy. Overheating seemed to be a problem and whilst a nice airy case might have sufficed I decided to pass. I still wonder about that decision. I wonder whether any of them are still running.
All of my cards are recognised by my DVBViewer software which ties them nicely together.
I've decided to jog along with my existing kit and only consider alternatives, if indeed they are available, as and if something fails. The kit is aging and I very much doing the same.

[JoeS99]

Marayong and cp2,
I capture using the Hauppauge PVR2 at 11kbps bitrate 1920 x 1080 in .ts format. I think the old ArcSoft capture software didn't save AC3 5.1 properly in mp4 format but ts worked.
I'm using it less these days as alternative (cough) sources are available.
Started with the PVR2 in 2013 and those older files are large because I didn't learn about bitrates for a while. I process the captured ts file with TS-Doctor, then do any editing with VRD - I prefer Ver 4 with the old interface. I reduce the bitrate with VRD or ffmpeg and usually save to mp4.
Just thought I'd add to the talk. My present Windows 11 laptop runs the Hauppauge Capture well.

[Marayong]

There's space for only so many pcie cards, so I resorted to the USB tuner. I do have a Hauppauge tv turner sitting in a box somewhere, along with a collection of other cards, but nowhere to stick it unless I bought an external pcie dock that plugs into a USB3 port, which rather defeats the point of using pcie over usb (speed).

It does seem a bit odd that Hauppauge seems to be only selling 10-20yo hardware, but then again, the market that they sell their products for has been technologically stable for 10 years or more. There are 4K and even 8K hdmi capture cards out there (Elgato have a series of them for instance), but since hauppauge targets those recording hdmi from set-top boxes, VCRs & game consoles, there's no need for anything more than HD, so they keep selling the old hardware. Since my hdmi feed is 1920x1080, I have no need to upgrade to a 4K receiver ... having said that I did buy a 4K USB hdmi receiver a few years ago that was on special as a backup in case I needed to use a laptop to record the hdmi feed.

I use Hauppauge's Capture software rather than the bundled WinTV. WinTV is really bloated as it tries to do a lot of things, whereas Capture just records and does that very well. You can use it to watch a hdmi feed, but it's pretty crappy, but then it's designed just as recording software, not viewing. As for the USB tuner, I suppose I'd use the bundled software to record from that but I've only fired it up a few times in the past 10 years and most of those for testing. It's been a good 15 years since I last recorded with it. One day when I need the usb port for something else, I'll probably remove it.

15-20 years ago there were a lot of different companies selling such things, but most of them have since vanished. The market is a lot smaller now since most users stream, so the market for capture devices is much, much smaller. And even there, most computer stores (online or brick) don't stock them and instead they order from their suppliers when a customer wants one.

My use has diminished a lot in the past two months ... I'm now able to access most of the stuff via "alternative (cough)" means, so VRD & the colossus only get used for those few things which are only broadcast via satellite & not via the cable company's streaming feed.

Be careful about reducing bitrates too much, improved software compression aside, higher bitrates means higher quality video. Lower bitrates can lead to blurring and pixelation when there is movement in the video. Think of framesize and bitrate as the equivalent of voltage and current - the amount of power you get from an electrical feed is a combination of both current & voltage. The same is true for video quality, high video quality requires a high frame size (viz voltage) and a high bitrate (viz current). As I said, software compression is a factor and newer codecs are more compressed, so more quality is squeezed into a newer codec video than an older one with the same bitrate. I generally go for a recording bitrate on par with the source - which may require a bit of hunting in obscure corners of the website of the source (if it is a cable tv service).

[Stez]

My source .ts recordings are coming from Beyonwiz PVRs running Enigma based firmware. Beyonwiz no longer sell these and I have two different models both of which have been repaired more than once. Fortunately there is a guy in Perth who is a genius with Beyonwiz electronics and has replaced burnt out motherboard components for me but eventually the hardware will fail me and I'll need some other way to capture FTA broadcasts. I'm thinking if I can't find a dedicated PVR that suits my needs post-Beyonwiz, I will see how I go connecting DVBT tuners to my computer as discussed above and recording with PC apps that provide PVR functionality. I think it will turn out to be a question of whether my current PVR hardware will outlast the need for FTA broadcast reception as I think current FTA programming will eventually be delivered via IP streaming rather than broadcast (or at least IP streaming will be a full alternative offered in parallel with broadcast).

[Marayong]

Fortunately Colossus2 cards and tv usb tuners are still on the market, so my only EOL concern is VRD. When that stops working I'll have to look for an alternative. But that's for the future. Even then, I'd probably set up VRD in a WIn7 VM, so I'd be able to keep VRD working for as long as I'm shuffling around this mortal coil.

As for FTA broadcast being replaced by streaming, I can't see that happening in a long time. There's always going to be a sizeable fraction of the population for whom streaming rather than broadcast is not going to be an option, whether because of ability (knowhow and skill), connectivity (it's not feasible or possible for a lot of tvs to be connected to the internet) or money and that group is the main demographic, even today, for FTA broadcasts. There are still lots of broadcast radio stations after all, despite all the people who use streaming services for their music needs. Even newspapers continue to survive despite predictions of their demise ever since the 90s .. and more than a few newspapers are enjoying an increase in subscriptions. Heck, even LPs, CDs and cassette tapes (!!!!!) have their sales shooting up again. 20 years ago there was one small company in Australia pressing music CDs, now there are quite a few including major labels.

[Stez]

As for FTA broadcast being replaced by streaming, I can't see that happening in a long time.

You're probably right, after all predictions of both old stuff dying off and new stuff becoming available are both notoriously unreliable.

No doubt I'll do the same as you and run VRD in a VM after modern systems no longer run it natively. I'm already finding a lot of AV1 vids that I've got to convert back to older codecs before I can edit them with VRD. As long as conversion apps exist that can back convert to VRD supported codecs we should be golden.

Regarding recording FTA broadcasts, I may need to end up exploring PC based alternatives to dedicated PVRs and perhaps DVBT tuners and apps like DVBViewer or NextPVR will serve my purpose.

[Marayong]

AFAIK, all pc tv tuners, whether pice or usb, come with their own software. To a big extent it doesn't matter how crappy that software is to use, as long as it records with a decent framesize and bitrate and in a format VRD can open. If you have 3rd party software which detects the device, even better, but not essential.