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DoomedTX
 Post subject: PVR-150 minimum bitrate?
PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 2:46 am 
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Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:05 pm
Posts: 252
Location: GA, USA
I've been using a PVR-250 on an SVN-updated version of R5F1 with no troubles. In fact, the PVR-250 has been working fine for over a year on various versions of Knoppmyth. I've been using the settings from http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=HauppaugeTwoFiftySettings . For Default recording profile it has 480x480, 2200 bitrate / max 3300. I've recorded hundreds of programs with no troubles on this setting.

Yesterday I found a great deal on some new 150 cards ($11 each!) and got two. I installed them in slots above the 250 so now video0 and video1 are 150s and video2 is the 250. Everything seemed to go fine with setup. LiveTV looks great.

However, recorded programs are unwatchable due to flicker and choppy video. I tried setting the quality to match LiveTV which is by default 720x480, 4400 bitrate / max 6000. Programs now look fine but I'm using double the disk space.

I tried incrementally changing first the max bitrate and then the bitrate starting from 2200/3000, and anything below 4400/6000 gives me the flicker/choppiness. I've searched all over this forum and the net but probably because I'm not using the identical term to describe the problem I can't find anyone else having the same problem.

Incidentally, at the original default setting I got an error in mythbackend.log because the encoder was trying to use 3300000 instead of 3300, but values above/below the 3300 mark don't result in similar errors.

If I absolutely have to run the 150s at high bitrates, is there a way to have separate settings for the 250 and use it as the default encoder? It seems like there's one setting for all x50 encoders.
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DoomedTX
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 6:41 am 
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Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:05 pm
Posts: 252
Location: GA, USA
To give some more information, I recorded 2 one-minute segments of American Chopper at different settings. Here are the results:

First, Default set to what it has been since I started using Myth: 480x480, Mpeg2 Hardware, MPEG2-PS, 4:3, 2200/3300. That gave me this snippet from mythbackend.log:
Code:
2007-10-07 15:00:02.832 TVRec(1): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
2007-10-07 15:00:02.854 TVRec(1): HW Tuner: 1->1
2007-10-07 15:00:03.127 Started recording: American Chopper "Space Shuttle Tribute Bike 1": channel 2002 on cardid 1, sourceid 2
2007-10-07 15:00:03.186 MPEGRec(/dev/video0) Warning: Audio sample rate 32000 Hz
                        is not supported by ivtv driver, using 48000 Hz instead.
2007-10-07 15:00:03.551 MPEGRec(/dev/video0) Error: Could not set Video Peak Bitrate to 3300000
                        eno: Numerical result out of range (34)
[mpeg @ 0xb7594db0]Parser not found for Codec Id: 94210 !
2007-10-07 15:02:13.355 AFD: Opened codec 0x8338a80, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-10-07 15:02:13.357 AFD: Opened codec 0x839db90, id(MP2) type(Audio)
[mpeg @ 0xb7594db0]Parser not found for Codec Id: 94210 !
2007-10-07 15:02:13.580 AFD: Opened codec 0x8338a80, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-10-07 15:02:13.581 AFD: Opened codec 0x839db90, id(MP2) type(Audio)
[mpeg @ 0xb7594db0]Parser not found for Codec Id: 94210 !
2007-10-07 15:02:13.780 AFD: Opened codec 0x8338a80, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-10-07 15:02:13.781 AFD: Opened codec 0x839db90, id(MP2) type(Audio)
2007-10-07 15:02:37.649 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2007-10-07 15:02:37.651 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2007-10-07 15:03:19.457 TVRec(1): Changing from RecordingOnly to None
2007-10-07 15:03:19.472 Finished recording American Chopper "Space Shuttle Tribute Bike 1": channel 2002


The video can be viewed here (~3.7MB): http://www.thecluelessamerican.net/video/Chopper_Bad.mov

Second recording, now settings show 720x480, Mpeg2 Hardware, MPEG2-PS, 4:3, 4500/6000. That gave me this snippet from mythbackend.log:
Code:
2007-10-07 15:05:08.488 TVRec(1): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
2007-10-07 15:05:08.502 TVRec(1): HW Tuner: 1->1
2007-10-07 15:05:08.783 Started recording: American Chopper "Space Shuttle Tribute Bike 1": channel 2002 on cardid 1, sourceid 2
2007-10-07 15:05:08.867 MPEGRec(/dev/video0) Warning: Audio sample rate 32000 Hz
                        is not supported by ivtv driver, using 48000 Hz instead.
[mpeg2video @ 0xb734cba8]Warning MVs not available
[mpeg @ 0xb7594db0]Parser not found for Codec Id: 94210 !
2007-10-07 15:05:16.117 AFD: Opened codec 0x83f4ba0, id(MPEG2VIDEO) type(Video)
2007-10-07 15:05:16.118 AFD: Opened codec 0x83803e0, id(MP2) type(Audio)
2007-10-07 15:05:53.134 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Monitor
2007-10-07 15:05:53.141 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2007-10-07 15:06:06.039 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2007-10-07 15:06:06.043 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2007-10-07 15:06:23.531 TVRec(1): Changing from RecordingOnly to None
2007-10-07 15:06:23.553 Finished recording American Chopper "Space Shuttle Tribute Bike 1": channel 2002


The video can be viewed here (~4.5MB): http://www.thecluelessamerican.net/video/Chopper_Good.mov

Notice that the second video is error free, ruling out any sort of problems with my video card setup, IMO.
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jzigmyth
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 7:54 am 
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Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:42 pm
Posts: 410
Location: middleton wi usa atsc
I also used to use 480x480, 2200 bitrate / max 3300 for my recordings with a PVR 500. When I moved R5F27 this resolution caused picture taring and instability. Moving to 720x480 does fix it, but as you say caused large files because of the higher bit rate needed.
If you completely disable VBI, you can go back to the 480x480 and the 2200 bitrate for smaller files. This seems to best be done in two places. First: Mythtv->Setup->General->Global Backend Setup->VBI Format: None if that doesn't work, try rebooting. If that still doesn't work then try modifying /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend. You need to add these two lines in two different places so they are executed prior to "start" and "restart" as documented by marc.aronson in this thread (albeit for a different problem!)
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13779
This is what my mythtv-backend file looks like. Yours might be different so just use this as a reference for where to add the four lines.
Of course, you will no longer have closed caption text after all this stuff!

Code:
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          mythtv-backend
# Required-Start:    $local_fs
# Required-Stop:     $local_fs
# Default-Start:     24
# Default-Stop:      S
# Short-Description: Start/Stop the MythTV server.
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/bin/mythbackend
NAME="mythbackend"
DESC="MythTV server"

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

set -e

USER=mythtv
RUNDIR=/var/run/mythtv
ARGS="--daemon --logfile /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log --pidfile $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid"
EXTRA_ARGS=""
#EXTRA_ARGS="--noupnp"
NICE=0

if [ -f /etc/default/mythtv-backend ]; then
  . /etc/default/mythtv-backend
fi

ARGS="$ARGS $EXTRA_ARGS"

mkdir -p $RUNDIR
chown -R $USER $RUNDIR


case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
        if start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --signal 0 --exec $DAEMON
        then
                echo " already running."
                exit
        fi
        ivtvctl --set-vbi=none
        ivtvctl --set-vbi-embed=0
        start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid \
                --chuid $USER --nicelevel $NICE --exec $DAEMON -- $ARGS
        echo "."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid \
                --chuid $USER --exec $DAEMON -- $ARGS
        test -e $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid && rm $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid
        echo "."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: $NAME"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo --pidfile $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid \
                --chuid $USER --exec $DAEMON -- $ARGS
        echo "."
        sleep 3
        ivtvctl --set-vbi=none
        ivtvctl --set-vbi-embed=0
        start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile $RUNDIR/$NAME.pid \
                --chuid $USER --nicelevel $NICE --exec $DAEMON -- $ARGS
        echo "."
        ;;
  *)
        N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
        echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0
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marc.aronson
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 8:41 am 
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Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:07 am
Posts: 1532
Location: California
My PVR-150 is configured as 720x480, bitrate and maxbitrate set to 3300, 4:3 aspect ratio, stream type is "mpeg-2 PS". Give that a try. If it doesn't work, post back all of the settings you have in the recording profile. Also, remember that the "default" recording profile and "live tv" profile are separate configurations...


Marc
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DoomedTX
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 8:41 am 
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Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:05 pm
Posts: 252
Location: GA, USA
I finally got around to changing my settings to 720x480, MPEG2-PS, 4:3, 2200 bitrate / 3300 max. It looks good so far. I'll report back if I have any further troubles. If I'm not mistaken this should result in larger files than the previous settings (everything the same except 480x480) but smaller than when I had the bitrate at 4500/6000. We'll see once the current test recording finishes.
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marc.aronson
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 6:22 pm 
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Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 2:07 am
Posts: 1532
Location: California
The resolution you choose will not have any impact on file size. Only the bitrate will effect file size. If you choose a high resolution, you will need a higher bitrate to achieve an acceptable quality.

Marc
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DoomedTX
 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:56 pm 
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Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 3:05 pm
Posts: 252
Location: GA, USA
That's great because it's nice to go back to the filesize I was previously using. I don't know why the PVR-150 didn't like 480x480, but it looks fine at 720x480 with the 2200/3300 bitrate.
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