Need help with DVB capture

[spolja]

Hi,
first, sorry for my bad english.
I have bought new SkyStar2 DVB card. I want to view and capture video mostly from Astra & Hotbird sattelites (Europe). Can you suggest me good program for that and some good links for newbies? I also need information about mpeg2 signal (resolution, how is Audio&Video encoded, etc.). Also some programs for editing/transporting mpeg 2 stream from source (mpeg2) to VDub?

Thanks in advance!

[DAvenger]

DVBViewer - http://www.dvbviewer.com

Also, check the DVBViewer forum - http://www.dvbviewer.com/forum a great DVB resource.

[spolja]

Thanks

[stax76]

there are quite a few freeware progs:

SkyView (many DVB features, unconventional UI)
DVBPortal
MyTheatre (quite popular, freeware until version 2.76)
ProgDVB (quite popular)
KeyDVB (GPL'ed C# app by me :)
WinSTB

there might be more (are there?)

[Hackbart]

yes there are a lot of free and non free programs available, but even if it sounds a bit arrogant there is definitively no feature which is not covered by the DVBViewer. From the ability to record more than one channel in the same time, over the feature to save the radio channels directly in MP3 and OGG Vorbis up to the - i suppose best teletext rendering engine ever available (you can even save the page as html). And i never ever found another program which is able to display slovenský and ceský characters. Even magyar is supported. I know especially for western european circumstances it's not that important, but for my RadLight friends i suppose it is ;)

Christian

[Doom9]

well.. for SS2 owners DVBViewer is free... sort of. You get a fully functional but somewhat restricted version with your card which works quite well (not yet sure where those channel switching problems come from but they also appear in other apps.. I have to investigate this issue a bit more but if my network goes down and I have to spend hours to try and find what's wrong that doesn't leave me with any time).

[Hackbart]

well the bundled version is not really restricted, but it truly does not offer all possible features. The problems you might have with the tuning of a couple transponders does appear definitively with all other tools too - since we worked very close together with the driver manufacturer ;)
I really recommend to have a look into the bug reports of the dvbviewer forum, since there a a couple of mentioned hard and software problems.

Christian
PS: Keep your DECT phone stay as far as possible away from your computer ;)

[DAvenger]

Originally posted by Hackbart
Keep your DECT phone stay as far as possible away from your computer ;)

Yay ;)

[Doom9]

Keep your DECT phone stay You mean the charging cradle, or the antenna? The antenna is 1 floor down, but the phone is pretty darned close. I never use that phone though.

[stax76]

I think DVBViewer looks good but needs some work. For instance I cannot find any edit features in the channellist dialog, I couldn't even figure out how to move channels to another position. That's basic functionality featured in pretty much every program. Maybe I overlooked something or this is a shareware only feature or my version is old, I did't find a version number either. My favorites don't work for some reason and the way how to create them again is rather clumsy and I cannot find a way to edit them as well, maybe I'm missing something

[ermannob]

Originally posted by spolja
...I also need information about mpeg2 signal (resolution, how is Audio&Video encoded, etc.). Also some programs for editing/transporting mpeg 2 stream from source (mpeg2) to VDub?

You can open those MPEG2 streams (if you saved them with ProgDVB or DVBViewer as .mpg files) directly with VirtualDubMod. Or you can use the "Gordian Knot way", as in Doom9's guide (like it was a DVD).

About streams: resolution may vary from provider to provider, as for bitrate and audio bitrate. Anyway video is a MPEG2 stream and audio is MPEG1 layer 2 (MP2).

[stax76]

GK is not very suited for sources other than DVD although it works in many scenarios. DVX can open pva, ts, vdr, mpg, avi, mkv, ogm, real video and everything else handled by PVAStrumento, Project X, DVD2AVI and AviSynth. It automates demuxing, creation of a DVD2AVI project, takes respect of weird resolutioms like 480x576, finds cropping, resizing values, has a neat (or clumsy if the user prefers mouse over keyboard) cutting feature and a joblist to encode a couple of captures

[Hackbart]

yes, Dolemite you are right with these problems but they are only inside the Technisatversion. The channellist is in the 2.0 Version easily to configure simply be moving entries via drag and drop. The next release also offers simple favourite handling (its an almost exact 1:1 copy of the internet explorer).
Same with the OSD Menu, only a few functions (channel scan) are not offered.
Maybe just as a hint, i personally prefer Vidomi for conversion ;)

Christian

[stax76]

maybe I'm slow, where is the trial version and how big is it?

about Vidomi: like Flask it's fairly limited compared to the tools we use here at Doom9, sometimes the image is screwed up

[Hackbart]

well there is no demo trial available. We had such a thing one year ago, but it did not tooked a week until the first unlock tools where available.
There are two unrestricted versions, the first one is bundled with the technisat card and offers all the things necessary to watch tv, program the recorder via epg, scan the channels, display teletext, etc. The second one is not free and offers all other things, from plugininterface (e.g. multicast) up to AC3, OSD Menus (i mean real OSDs like on real Settopboxes), Subtitles, almost every function which is available on other programs is also inside and those which are not available are offered in form of plugins (radio->MP3/OGG, Multirecorder etc.).

Christian

[stax76]

OK, I understand. I never buy shareware or to be more precise I stopped that a long time ago. If I wasn't able to integrate everything I need in my own program DVBViewer possibly could be the first exception to this rule. Probably I would still stick to VDR because rules are rules and rule number one is open source rules :D

[Hackbart]

thats your point of view. Believe me if i say, i was also - years ago - the same opinion, but the more work you spend into a program and the more services you offer the more time and money you have to affort publishing free software. The coronation which forced me todo this, was that i have had to pay ~600 EUR for traffic after publishing a free program.. But i would not warm up stale news ;)
Yes i know that VDR is state of art - if you want to build up a settop box under linux.. This was one of the reasons why i also wanted an integrated osd abutted to an settop box..
By the way i would also recommend you to have a look at mythtv, which is defintively also worth a try.

[stax76]

nothing wrong with earning money with shareware if the customers are happy with the product. Making free software don't necessary cost money except the time you spend which is supposed to be fun. First .NET can be used because it rocks and has ultra small binaries, second yahoo groups can be used for very small projects and SourceForge for larger projects, third there are great free development tools like SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop

[ronnylov]

Can you record teletext subtitles directly to srt format with DVBViewer? I always record with either DVBControl, DVBXtreme or ProgDVB because they support teletext subtitles recording. In my experience I get the best recording quality from DVBControl and the best recorded subtitles from ProgDVB (after tweaking the fonts to allow swedish åäö).

So I recommend using DVBControl to record and ProgDVB to watch TV.

After recording to pva I use PVAStrumento to demux to mpv and mpa. If converting to avi I use Virtualdubmod, sometimes togehter with avisynth and dvd2avi. PVAStrumento will save information of the streams in a log file, including resolution and bitrate. But you can also get the information by analyzing the mpv with bitrateviewer.

To make DVD I just convert srt to ssa with subadjust and then use MaestroSBT to make it compatible with DVDMaestro, then import the streams as assets and author as normal in DVDMaestro (if video resolution is DVD compliant, otherwise it must be reencoded to compliant DVD resolution). With non-standard resolutions you can author with DVD-lab if your dvd player supports the non-standard resolutions, but unfortunately you can't add subtitles in DVDlab.

[Hackbart]

as mentioned, there is no feature missing in comparison to other programs.
Teletextsubtitles are stored as "special" .srt file. This means its an ordinary srt file, but the text content also has informations about the forground and background color. This way it allows to display coloured subtitles - everything else is just crap for hearing impaired people..

Christian

[ermannob]

Originally posted by Dolemite
DVX can open pva, ts, vdr, mpg, avi, mkv, ogm, real video and everything else handled by PVAStrumento, ...
Yesterday I tried it and it seems very powerful, but PLEASE fix the installer! :mad:
I think it should ask which single app to install.
My situation: I already have AviSynth 2.5.4 and after the installation I have AviSynth 2.5.3RC (something like that), I already have XviD 1.0 RC1 and now I have XviD 1.0 beta3 (note that reinstalling RC1 I lost my settings).
I think the installer should take more care about my preferences!

Anyway keep the good work!:)

[ronnylov]

Originally posted by Hackbart
as mentioned, there is no feature missing in comparison to other programs.
Teletextsubtitles are stored as "special" .srt file. This means its an ordinary srt file, but the text content also has informations about the forground and background color. This way it allows to display coloured subtitles - everything else is just crap for hearing impaired people..

Christian

Does it work with my Technotrend DVB-C 2.1 cable card?
Does it work with SkyStar1 based cards (my DVB-C is more like a skystar1 than a skystar2)? According to the homepage it was designed for skystar2 only.

Can it save a standard srt file without the "special" addons?
I don't want something that will cause compability problems when converting to DVD subtitles.

EDIT: The thread starter obviously has a skystar2. Then it will not work with DVBControl as I suggested earlier. Sorry...

[DAvenger]

DVBViewer works with SkyStar2 only. Why? It's cheap, stable (with the latest drivers) and it's cheap :p

If you need CI ... well, then it's better to get some other card.