Record Television onto your Hard Drive

[mazzy1026]

Hi people - after some browsing on Google I am having no luck in finding a program that lets me record TV programs onto my hard drive - having a TV schedule (whats on) would be an extra bonus too. Anyone have one or know where I can get one?

Thanks as always,

Maz :ok:

[DeepC]

I've got a £40 PC TV Card with an Amplified Set top aerial.
This displays in a window on the PC. It comes with a scheduler program for recording shows to your hard drive. Works fine.

Records as MPG which quickly fill up your hard drive.

DeepC

[mazzy1026]

Thanks DeepC

I have the TV Card setup already, and simply need the software, like what you mention..........what's it called?

Cheers,

Maz

[Tonkatoy]

Take a look at Showshifter. I've used it with a DVB-T card and am much impressed. It might be a little more than you need, but you can get a 15 day demo download so suck and see.

Ian

[mazzy1026]

That looks quite good actually, I will give it a go - £99 is abit steep tho :confused:

[DeepC]

It is a Hauppage TV Card which comes with Hauppage Scheduler.

DeepC

[Background Noise]

The card manufacturers' websites usually have the software available for download. I have used hauppauge in the past very successfully - whether you can use their drivers for another card I don't know.

Radio times have an online listing service which is free and configurable (if you register) to your channels - freeview etc - and they also have a subscription add on which puts a week or so at a time on your pda.

Radio Times (http://www.radiotimes.com/)

[Tonkatoy]

£99 includes a DVB-T card and a remote control. The software alone costs £50.

I've found that the software that comes with cards are OK for watching TV, but fall down when you start trying to do something like timeshift or record. Check out the free stuff and if it works, you've saved just under half a lesson :ok: (I've been keeping up with your thread in Private Flying).

If you're really up for a challenge, there's always mythTV. Thats free...as in speech.

[mazzy1026]

Thanks people, I have tried this ShowShifter program and it is quite good - but like you say Tonka - I need to try and save this half a lesson :D

Thanks again

Maz :cool:

[FireFoxDown]

Quick question if i may -> does it take up a lot of space? Now, i realise this would be dependednt on the quality settings you choose but lets say for good quality, how much?

thanks! :ok:

[mazzy1026]

Hi Fox

Yes - I can imagine it will take up quite a bit of space. My plan is to use a RW DVD so that I can record programs, watch them, and re write the DVD for later use etc. I am getting the hang of this ShowShifter and it is pretty good - looks like I may have to sacrifice one of my lessons though :{

[Tosh McCaber]

What length of time will you get recording per gigabyte?

[mazzy1026]

To be honest I am hoping that someone else can answer that, but it will depend on the format you set and the quality of the recording :confused:

[Memetic]

Take a look at MythTV - I'm planning on making this the core of mey next PC project. www.mythtv.org cost £0 :ok:

[Tonkatoy]

MythTV looks like some cracking software, but takes some setting up.

I'd be interested in knowing how you get on. (Sorry for Hijacking your thread Maz)

[Memetic]

I have to get a card 1st... and time to tinker...

[mazzy1026]

No worries mate - I have decided to give up anyhow. Was using Showshifter to record a program which was successful, but when I burn it as a movie using nero - the sound is about 4 seconds out of synch with the display! :confused:

[Lost_luggage34]

You could try this to re-synch the audio and video streams ;

Audio/Video synch fixer (http://www.drdsystems.com/VideoReDo/download.htm)

[Tonkatoy]

Shame you've given up mate. If you decide to have another crack, take a look at www.virtualdub.org . This is a free, and well worth it for fixing and re-encoding video.

Have you tried the Showshifter support forum about preventing the problem in the first place?

[mazzy1026]

Appreciate all your help guys - I will try out what has been suggested. I think the video is actually ok - it is the process of burning it with Nero that puts it out of synch. I think I will just resort to either watching it on the PC or use good old fashioned VHS ! :ok:

[criticalmass]

I am currently using a custom-built video editing PC which is fitted out for video capture (from any source) roughly as follows:

3 Ultra-SCSI 10,000RPM drives, 2 X 17Gb Ultra 160-SCSI, 1 X 36Gb Ultra 320 SCSI.
Adaptec U2940 Host adapter (ultra 160 and Fast-SCSI 2 support)
Canopus AceDVIO capture card
Sony Vegas 4 editing software
Sony DVD Architect v1 DVD authoring software
Nero burning software
Plextor 708A ATAPI CD/DVD burner
Windows XP home
1Gb RAM
256Mb AGP graphics card
2.3Ghz AMD Athlon processor
Soundblaster Audigy sound-card
Antec 550W power-supply (all these devices draw rather a lot of power, and I added an additional cooling fan inside the tower case.)

This is just an edit-box, it doesn't go on the 'net, it doesn't keep business records, it just captures, edits, renders and burns. It works flawlessly, although rendering time is approx 1.4 ttimes actual production length 1. e. a 1 hour video takes approx 1.4 hours to render to MPEG2. Rendering is hugely processor-intensive and you can't use the machine whilst it is rendering. I am using standard 4:3 aspect ratio, 720X576 pixel PAL frames at 25fps.

You need very large hard-drives to capture uncompressed video. Some capture cards encode on-the-fly to MPEG2, but I prefer to work with uncompressed files because after my editing is finished I can choose the average bit-rate for the rendering software to use when it converts the output file to MPEG2 before it gets chopped up into the .BUP. IFO and .VOB files which have to be burnt to a DVD to make a playable Video-DVD. I work with MPEG2 a lot on satellite transport streams and am quite familiar with what quality is sacrificed to compress 1.5 hours of video onto a 4.7Gb single-sided DVD, hence my preference for editing uncompressed frames.

The Ultra-SCSI drives at 10,000rpm spindle-speed will not drop frames, but you need a very fast processor and a lot of RAM. Already I am thinking of upgrading all the drives to 80Gb Ultra320 SCSI...which will cost about three times what most people would be prepared to pay for a complete system!

Video capture from TV is easy - I just plug the output of an S-VHS VCR into the capture card (y/c video, stereo audio) and start the capture engine. The VCR is just used as a tuner in this case. THis system also works direct from Satellite IRDs as well as all flavours of Betacam machines, although the capture card doesn't have an input for SDI video with embedded audio.

This was built as a serious production box, and so far it has given every satisfaction. The burner has surpassed the 500 DVD burn mark without a problem, although I have had some DVDs fail the burn process, or purn OK but glitch on a playback test. If you can afford it, use the best quality CDs/DVDs you can buy.

The biggest, fastest hard-drives you can get will go a long way to easing any worries about direct capture. I stick with SCSI because that's what I have always used, but these days the ATAPI/EIDE and SATA hard-drives are pretty damn good, especially at 10,000RPM.

[mazzy1026]

Slightly off topic, but I have just found out that Argos are selling a DVD player, that will play AVI and DIVX etc (I just had to buy it at £50). This is great as recorded movies, or similar, can be played straight from a disc - no need to render, just plonk the AVI file straight onto the disc and hey presto. AVI is good because it is highly compressed and if you get a decent enough size, you will get good quality.

:ok: