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HD-PVR Questions - Recording Profile and Recording List
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Author:  grg3 [ Mon Mar 22, 2010 8:44 am ]
Post subject:  HD-PVR Questions - Recording Profile and Recording List
I finally received my HD-PVR the other day. Having already upgraded to the latest and greatest LinHES and installed a 8400GS, I was only waiting for the HD-PVR to arrive. The installation was relatively painless and I made several test recordings without incident. So far, I have had more trouble playing back than recording.

Even with an Athlon 64 X2 3800 and an 8400GS video card, I had trouble getting the playback to run smoothly at my monitor's native resolution of 1680x1050. I had a moment of panic when everything went south, the mythfrontend.log ballooned and nothing would work anymore. It turned out that the root partition was full! I had forgotten to delete some files from Miro and they nearly filled up the root partition. The runaway log just hastened the inevitable. Once the offending files were deleted things started working again. I finally ended up using 1280x1024 for playback and that seems to allow vdpau playback without buffering errors.

I am curious about what others are using for a recording profile. I spent a bit of time searching for instructions on how to use the new recording profile screen in 0.22 and did not come up with anything. Right now I have the bit rate maxed at 8000 and the High Quality checked and the recording are pretty good. I find that the file sizes are not that different than those from my PVR-150 (about 1or2gb/hr). I was expecting larger file sizes. This leads me to suspect that I am missing something. I would be grateful for advice from someone who has had experience with trying out different profile settings. I should mention that I have Directv HD as my source.

The only other side effect I have noticed from adding the HD-PVR and removing my PVR-150 is that the channel name and number is now not displaying in the recorded programs list. For example: Turner Classic Movies might display as 256 TCM in the recording list now displays #5256 for old recordings made by the old tuner and correctly for recordings made by the HD-PVR. I seem to remember that this has always been the case when tuners are changed, but I can't remember if there is a way to fix it. Anybody know if there is a fix? If not, I will rely on the time proven method of watch and delete the old programs. :)
Author:  nharris [ Mon Mar 22, 2010 11:04 am ]
Post subject: 
The file sizes are correct. The HD-PVR uses H.264 (MPEG4) compression and your old PVR-150 uses MPEG2 compression.

Make sure you save all media to the /myth partition. The root partition is small.

Sounds like you changed sources or such during your switch to the HD-PVR and your old linking DB entries are gone. I'm not sure how to fix this.
Author:  grg3 [ Mon Mar 22, 2010 12:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
I didn't realize the miro files were going to the home directory.
Author:  nharris [ Mon Mar 22, 2010 2:35 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yeah. I sort of wish that home was on /myth too. I have my /home sym linked to /myth/home.
Author:  grg3 [ Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:08 pm ]
Post subject: 
I ran across another of your posts that indicate that you are using dirctv at 720p for your HD-PVR. That is what I am using. How did you end up setting your recording profile?
Author:  mihanson [ Tue Mar 23, 2010 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: HD-PVR Questions - Recording Profile and Recording List
grg3 wrote:
I finally ended up using 1280x1024 for playback and that seems to allow vdpau playback without buffering errors.


grg3: Have you tried playing with your playback profile? Service Menu > MythTV Config > Setup > TV Settings > Playback > Page 3.

I believe there's a way to fiddle with vdpaubuffers as well. Try searching the mythtv mailing lists for that.
Author:  grg3 [ Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:14 am ]
Post subject: 
I tried adding the triplebuffer option to xorg.conf, but that didn't do anything but make X refuse to start. I have looked for buffering information on vdpau, but so far have not found much. I have found more posts on vdpau by far than I have found on tuning the HD-PVR recording profile. While it would be nice to be able to tweak X so I can playback at native resolution, I am content to optimize around 720p for the moment.

I can certainly testify that the effect of vdpau on processor load are very dramatic. Even my 8400GS, which is not capable of full vdpau, drops cpu usage to a fraction of what it is during HD playback without vdpau.
Author:  nharris [ Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:38 am ]
Post subject: 
grg3 wrote:
I ran across another of your posts that indicate that you are using dirctv at 720p for your HD-PVR. That is what I am using. How did you end up setting your recording profile?

Yes, in the past I had my DirecTV box pinned at 720p. As I remember, I almost maxed out the bit rate in the recording profile. Using 720p means no deinterlacing (faster commflagging, less problems with playback when not using vdpau, etc...). Early on, the drivers for the HD-PVR and MythTV had issues switching resolutions and keeping it set at 720p made my system stable. However, this been worked through now and many report everything working fine when letting their DirecTV box output native.
Author:  grg3 [ Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:21 am ]
Post subject: 
I have not had any problem with letting my receiver float, but I changed it to 720p to see if it helped make the recording and playback more consistent.

I am currently using the following settings for recording and I would be interested in hearing what works for other:

BitRate: 8000 (max)
Max Quality: 2 (default)
Min Quality: 15 (default)
Max Diff: 3 (default)
Scaling: off (turning this on seemed to lead to massive error logs)
High Quality: on
4MV: off ( I couldn't tell if this made things better or worse)
INT DCT: off (default)
INT MOT: off (default)
Thread: 1 (default, this is dual core system)

I have no idea if this is optimized for my 720p source or not. So far this seems to work pretty well and not crash.

The only downside to using the HD-PVR compared to my PVR-150 is the lack of lossless transcoding. For me, that is only an issue for something I want to archive. I may have to investigate some of the scripts that are available to transcode and remove a predetermined cutlist. That may be the best solution for archiving. You almost always have to fine tune the cutlist before archiving anyway running a script to process the cuts should not be too onerous.
Author:  grg3 [ Sat Apr 10, 2010 8:07 pm ]
Post subject: 
Update:

I am letting my receiver float again. I have been playing around with the recording profile by changing to scaling on and increasing bitrate starting at 2200. The picture is still not perfect but it is close to the original, fills the screen and allows me to skip commercials!

I am currently using the following settings for recording and I would be interested in hearing what works for other:

BitRate: 4600 (max)
Max Quality: 2 (default)
Min Quality: 15 (default)
Max Diff: 3 (default)
Scaling: on
High Quality: on
4MV: off ( I couldn't tell if this made things better or worse)
INT DCT: off (default)
INT MOT: off (default)
Thread: 1 (default, this is dual core system)
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