Questions regarding transferring shows from DTV box

[abyss616]

I know there are many of this types of this kind of question, but I haven't been able to find specific info and I want to make sure I can do what I want to do before I spend upwards of $200-300.

I want to be able to take programs recorded on my DirecTV HD DVR and transfer them to my PC to archiving (either as mp4 or DVD).

I have my eye on the Blackmagic Intensity and understand that I will not be able to transfer the shows via the HDMI cable but should through the component out (yes?). I want to have them in the highest possible quality without going overboard on the size. I guess 720p would be good?

If this is possible, I'm wondering if it would be better to capture as avi through VirtualVCR (WDM) or VirtualDub (VFW) or another program that captures it natively as an mpg since I want to ultimately author to DVD.

That's it for now. I really want to jump into the digital age with this and abandon my video tapes. Thanks for looking and any info.

[dat720]

Your better off capturing at 576p (PAL) if your going to author to DVD, capturing at 720P just add's another lengthy process to your encode as part of the authoring process will be resizing the 720p video to the appropriate resolution (depends on if your NTSC or PAL).

$250 USD for the Black magic you'd be better off simply buying the DVD version of your recordings.....

The other thing you're going to have to take into account is you will have to capture as uncompressed hd then encode to your chosen codec, there aren't many PC's that will be capable of encoding a real time HD stream, this means you're going to need truly huge amounts of hard drive space, think hundreds of gigabytes free to do a hour long capture....

My PVR here at home is a MythTV PC with a Haupage PVR500 capture card that has a satellite STB connected to it via SVIDEO and you can barely tell the difference between directly connected to a TV or running through Myth, it probably looks better as Myth is doing post processing on the picture.

[abyss616]

What I'm trying to record are sporting events and other shows which can't be bought. I also want to try to take some of my old recordings on video tape and convert those as well.

Another option I've looked into is the Hauppauge HD PVR. It does the encoding for you (h.264) but does having the capture card give you more control over the file?

[dat720]

The Blackmagic is going to be useless for Video Tapes, the HD PVR is a better option.
What do you mean by 'more control over the file'?
You can do what ever you want with the files you just need the appropriate software for what ever your trying to do.

[abyss616]

Meaning you can capture it via any number of programs (virtualdub, virtualvcr) in different formats (lagarith, huffyuv, mpg).

Why do you say the Blackmagic would be useless for VCR tapes?

What about this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815127006 ? Would that be a good option?

I'm just trying to find the best method for doing what I want to do, so I want to cover all the bases before I get started. Thanks for the info.

[880]

Beware HDCP issues. The recordings on your DVR probably have Digital Rights Management applied, so if you try to record with the Intensity then you will get nothing.

[abyss616]

Beware HDCP issues. The recordings on your DVR probably have Digital Rights Management applied, so if you try to record with the Intensity then you will get nothing.
I had heard that was the case with using an HDMI cable but hadn't seen anything definitive about using component connections.

[dat720]

Why do you say the Blackmagic would be useless for VCR tapes?

Cos the Black Magic intensity you referred to is a HDMI capture card.... you would have to run a VCR through some other device, some AV receivers might be able to upscale a composite/svideo source to a HDMI source, not sure tho i've never investigated that... unless you find a VCR with HDMI out, never seen one myself.

Component can't carry HDCP signals, so yes you could capture via Component rather than HDMI

[abyss616]

According to the card's info (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/) it comes with a break-out cable allowing it to connect to devices using composite or component connections - or am I interpreting that wrong?