Any PVR program that suports hardware mpeg2 encoding WITHOUT using timeshifting?

[cesm23]

it does exist such a program ? i after googling a lot i am startind to doubt... Unless it's impossible to switch that off because of the way that hardware encoding works, in that case, jeez i just have to get used to timeshift, the problem is that i already losed recordings made this way.

[olyteddy]

Just what do you mean by timeshifting? I have a Hauppauge MPEG2 encoder and it delays the video (and audio) by a second or two according to the TV across the room. This delay is needed because to efficiently encode it needs to look at at least an entire GOP (typically15 frames, or about .5 seconds). If you could encode with every frame an I frame the delay would be shorter because the encoder wouldn't need to compare the similarity of the frames. That would result in much larger files.

[cesm23]

well i mean to be able to watch tv with this card WITHOUT having the software to record the show to the disk all the time, and only record when i press the record button just like i was able to do with normal software encoder cards. Unless for the hardware mpg2 encoding cards to work it's impossible to avoid the streaming to the disk permanently all the time ?

[DonQ]

From your another thread I assume you have ATI 650 card? You need tweak ATI software settings in registry - at least for previous 'wonders' (based on Theatre 200 chip) it was possible (I had one such card a while ago). Some hints can probably found on rage3d forum.

[cesm23]

Yes it's the ati tv wonder 650 pci card, the PAL version.

Welll i did so much googling for this card and i don't think i found such tweaks, also i am definetly not using catalyst media center, even with the latest update the program is way too slow, while most other pvr programs like Sagetv (which is the one i am using now) records the shows without any delays in audio and video, the only problem being the constant streaming to the hard drive.

Well i would definetly need such tweaks but what i need most is tweaks for the wdm drivers itselfs not the catalyst media center.

[DonQ]

These tweaks may affect WDM drivers, I'd give a try.
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33869990
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7125159&&#post7125159
If no help, then need to search further :)

[cesm23]

well... thanks a lot for the links, altough probably this will only affect catalyst media center, since at least in sage tv it had no effect, nothing changed so far.

[DonQ]

Looking at SageTV information and forums seems that it does always use timeshifting while watching live TV and that can't be switched off; thus suggested tweaks won't work anyway.
But how do you know that it uses timeshifting while recording? Maybe all that you see is disk activity due to the recording itself?

When I used ATI tuner card, I did capture with VirtualDub. Well, it was much older card (AIW9800), maybe 650 doesn't allow use VDub so easily (and maybe WDM drivers have changed substantially). I captured 'live', not by schedule and I used analog audio connection. I don't know, can VDub hook up PCI audio for 650 or not - it can for SAA713x cards.

I tried many dfferent capture programs, VDub was best. This time I had somewhat old slow PC and VDub has least overhead and allows configure disk buffering; some other programs just ran out of resources or started skip frames.

Probably you need to experiment with more PVR programs. Basically capturing mpeg2 (or any other stream) doesn't need intermediate buffering to disk.
Maybe you can configure SageTV to buffer/capture on another HDD (if you have many HDDs)? This way that won't interfere with other activity.

[cesm23]

Looking at SageTV information and forums seems that it does always use timeshifting while watching live TV and that can't be switched off; thus suggested tweaks won't work anyway.

Well just forget about the timeshifting thing i am starting to get used to it, since i can't turn it off anyways...

But how do you know that it uses timeshifting while recording? Maybe all that you see is disk activity due to the recording itself?
No i open the recording folder, and when i am watching a channel there is a mpg file that it's size is increasing constantly all the time (i use a dual panel file manager, not windows explorer) and as soon as i exit sage tv it stops. anyway i am now more used to this so it's not a big deal now :)

When I used ATI tuner card, I did capture with VirtualDub. Well, it was much older card (AIW9800), maybe 650 doesn't allow use VDub so easily (and maybe WDM drivers have changed substantially).

Well this card DOES work well with virtual dub and similar capture software like Iuvcs and like this it does NOT streaming to the hard drive at all, altough i lose the hardware encoding ability since if i record a show it will record in avi, i tried a few mpeg2 recorder programs but they did not use the hardware encoder (probably because those softwares don't support timeshifting). One of the most annoying limtations in vdub and similar programs is only being able to capture at 720x576 but that i overcame by choosing the ffdshow filter and resampling to 384x288 in "point" resize method.

I captured 'live', not by schedule and I used analog audio connection. I don't know, can VDub hook up PCI audio for 650 or not - it can for SAA713x cards.

Well at least on windows xp i am not having problems getting the internal audio, it works just like the saa713x cards (in fact i am also using a saa713x card in the other pci slot) and i am even able to capture 2 shows at the same time, one using the saa713x card (in avi using ffdshow) and in mpeg2 in sage using the at wonder 650.

Probably you need to experiment with more PVR programs. Basically capturing mpeg2 (or any other stream) doesn't need intermediate buffering to disk. Maybe you can configure SageTV to buffer/capture on another HDD (if you have many HDDs)? This way that won't interfere with other activity.

Hum... nevermind that too, it's ok now.

There is two things that i would like to know if happens to you too :

- frequently when i switch channels, sometimes the channel becomes with a kind of inversed colors problem, it's like it they get reversed, this only happens when i change channel (and when stopping recordings), and happens even more frequently with the composite input. This never happened before with the saa713x card only in the tv wonder 650 card, and happens in both sage tv and vdub-like sofware this seems to have something to do with the internal filters of the card...

- i seem to get the hardware filters at full work only when mpeg2 recording is done... since usually i always get a less good picture when using vdub and other software... is it possible that the hardware filters only work when doing hardware encode? It does make sense...

[pdanpdan]

you can try GBPVR - works quite nice with a 550Pro (I think the analog part is the same as 650)

[cesm23]

No no it's ok for now :) I got sagetv working ok now. By the way i already tried GBPVR and it doesn't even support my card correctly... forget about that one :) (well... unless i configurated it incorrectly, but forget it now i got used to sage tv)

The only problem now is the green colors i get sometimes when i change channel, this is very annoying and i can't schedule recordings when i am not in the pc because sometims the green colors stay and of course i don't want recordings with colors like this...