After trying to decrypt the contents of my TataSky HDD unsuccessfully i finally caved in and bought a capture card from the local shop. Its a Avermedia DVD EZMaker Gold V1A8 and since its cheap it does not have any HDMI or high def inputs
The reason why i did not buy a TV tuner instead is because i have no need for the TV tuner chipset only a capturing device which can preview and record and the Avermedia DVD EZMaker Gold V1A8 can do just that.
Here is the list of cards that were avalible with the seller he had no Hauppauge or any other brand:
Aver DVD EZMaker Gold:- 2100
Aver DarkCrystal HD Capture Pro:- 7600
Aver Game Broadcaster HD:- 9000
As you can see i choose the cheapest one purely because i was not sure that the HD card would do H/W based encode for H.264. I can always upgrade to a better card which supports 1080i/1080p and ac3.
Now on to the card it is not bad at all for the money records pretty well but it did not use hardware based encode for anything other than MPEG2. But after an hour of tinkering i found a setting which results in 0 frames dropped and the audio being AC3 is hardware accelerated by my home theater.
Here is my mediainfo:-
General
Complete name : C:\capture_23_14_13.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 5.41 MiB
Duration : 6s 360ms
Overall bit rate : 7 136 Kbps
Video
ID : 0
Format : VP7
Format profile : General
Codec ID : VP70
Codec ID/Hint : On2
Duration : 6s 360ms
Bit rate : 6 301 Kbps
Width : 768 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.570
Stream size : 4.78 MiB (88%)
Audio
ID : 1
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 5s 984ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 468 KiB (8%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 265 ms (6.63 video frames)
I have attached an sample from the card, the video comes from TataSky+ HD via a S-Video to the card. The audio from TataSky comes to the Linein of the computer and is thus recorderd as 2 channel by the cards software.
Now you can choose between a few formats to record in MPEG2, MPEG1, h264 and VP70. MPEG2 is HW accelarated but neither h.264 or VP70 are, i was only interested in VP70 and h264 and after a little testing i came to the conclusion that h264 sucked in comparison to VP70 in real time encoding with the resolution limit. The audio codes in hand are PCM, MP3, ac3 and WMA. I am using ac3 because my home theater that is attached to my computer via HDMI can accelate ac3,DTS and MPEG audio via passthrough.
CONCLUSION:- Its fine for now but i am going to upgrade to some thing that can record like 6pack's hauppauge hd tv tuner "See the spoiler"
http://www.techenclave.com/topic/50...d-conversion/page__view__findpost__p__1700961
This records in 768x576 while TataSky resolution is 1280x720 so its not really recording all the details TataSky puts out but for Rs.2100 its fine. Oh ya my Creative XFi Audio is not recognised at all by the Avermedia DVD EZMaker Gold V1A8 software.
Here is the SAMPLE its 5MB
Here are the image captures:
The reason why i did not buy a TV tuner instead is because i have no need for the TV tuner chipset only a capturing device which can preview and record and the Avermedia DVD EZMaker Gold V1A8 can do just that.
Here is the list of cards that were avalible with the seller he had no Hauppauge or any other brand:
Aver DVD EZMaker Gold:- 2100
Aver DarkCrystal HD Capture Pro:- 7600
Aver Game Broadcaster HD:- 9000
As you can see i choose the cheapest one purely because i was not sure that the HD card would do H/W based encode for H.264. I can always upgrade to a better card which supports 1080i/1080p and ac3.
Now on to the card it is not bad at all for the money records pretty well but it did not use hardware based encode for anything other than MPEG2. But after an hour of tinkering i found a setting which results in 0 frames dropped and the audio being AC3 is hardware accelerated by my home theater.
Here is my mediainfo:-
General
Complete name : C:\capture_23_14_13.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 5.41 MiB
Duration : 6s 360ms
Overall bit rate : 7 136 Kbps
Video
ID : 0
Format : VP7
Format profile : General
Codec ID : VP70
Codec ID/Hint : On2
Duration : 6s 360ms
Bit rate : 6 301 Kbps
Width : 768 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.570
Stream size : 4.78 MiB (88%)
Audio
ID : 1
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 5s 984ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 468 KiB (8%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 265 ms (6.63 video frames)
I have attached an sample from the card, the video comes from TataSky+ HD via a S-Video to the card. The audio from TataSky comes to the Linein of the computer and is thus recorderd as 2 channel by the cards software.
Now you can choose between a few formats to record in MPEG2, MPEG1, h264 and VP70. MPEG2 is HW accelarated but neither h.264 or VP70 are, i was only interested in VP70 and h264 and after a little testing i came to the conclusion that h264 sucked in comparison to VP70 in real time encoding with the resolution limit. The audio codes in hand are PCM, MP3, ac3 and WMA. I am using ac3 because my home theater that is attached to my computer via HDMI can accelate ac3,DTS and MPEG audio via passthrough.
CONCLUSION:- Its fine for now but i am going to upgrade to some thing that can record like 6pack's hauppauge hd tv tuner "See the spoiler"
http://www.techenclave.com/topic/50...d-conversion/page__view__findpost__p__1700961
This records in 768x576 while TataSky resolution is 1280x720 so its not really recording all the details TataSky puts out but for Rs.2100 its fine. Oh ya my Creative XFi Audio is not recognised at all by the Avermedia DVD EZMaker Gold V1A8 software.
Here is the SAMPLE its 5MB
Here are the image captures:
