Media Portal questions

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keriboi

277 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#16223 30-Sep-2007 12:08

Had media portal tv server running for a day now, and have a few questions.

1. How do I change the recording quality settings? Theres a menu option in MP but no settings there. Is there a way I can get it to record into divx or xvid, The All Blacks game last night recorded at 9gigs! LOL :P

2. The interlacing option? Not sure about this one, do we need it with the feed we are getting? Havent been able to notice a difference, but I havent run it on a big monitor yet.

3. Codecs, I have a huge list of audio and video codecs, does it really matter which one i use? are any better than the others?

4. While recording a channel, how come I can watch some other channels? but not others? eg see screen grab

[img]http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/541/51796026yj4.jpg[/img]

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/541/51796026yj4.jpg

5. Which progam do I use to configure MP, I have the server application, and config mp application,

EDIT.

Specs
Freeview with DVB-S
Windows XP MCE
1 gig ram
P4 3.2
Hauppauge Nova - S - Plus
Media Portal server,

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 222

#88710 30-Sep-2007 12:54

What are your system specs? i.e. TV Cards? analog, DVB-S etc

I'll assume your using freeview with a DVB-S card....

1.What comes off the satellite is just data, (MPEG2 data) there is no way to specify the quality, the broadcaster sets it, e.g. I think TV is around 6mbps?. so that's what you get, a 6mbps data stream you're just saving it to disk and playing it back.

The only way to reduce the size as you mentioned would be to compress it to mpeg4 (xvid etc) but you couldn't do that on the fly it's requires too much processing power. The best thing you can do when you have a PVR is just to have big disks then you don't have to worry about how big the shows are. I bought a Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATA drive for $120.inc and that about 4 months ago so I guess it's not expensive.

2.Not sure on this one, maybe depends on the codec you're using?? If you can't see the difference then don't worry about it.

3. What codecs to you have? I use the NVIDIA PureVideo codec and it works well. the MPV and MPA codecs are pretty basic. I think cyberlink codecs are good too, I think you can get them for free by installing a trail version of the latest cyberlink powerdvd.

4. You can only record/watch multiple channels on the same card if they are on the same transponder (Frequency) Freeview uses 2 transponders.

12483Mhz = TVNZ Maori, etc
12456Mhz = TV3 C4, etc

So if you're recording TV2 you can watch TV1 but not TV3. Make sense? That's why it's good to have 2 DVB-S cards, you'll be able to record/watch all Freeview channels at once. I'd probably recommend waiting now for DVB-T rather than getting another DVB-S card; Or do both!

5. On the start menu "MediaPortal TV Server" is used to configure all TVServer options cards, channels, EPG etc. TVServer it self is a system service that runs in the background; you don't have to have "MediaPortal TV Server" open.

On the start menu "MediaPortal Configuration" is used to configure all the MediaPortal front-end options and also TV settings if you don't use TVServer, if you do use TVServer most of these options should be "greyed" out.

TV Server replaces the built-in TV Support in mediaportal and the built-in support will be phased out eventually.

Cheers,
mcraenz

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keriboi

277 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#88717 30-Sep-2007 13:09

thanks for your help, i now understand. I will look further into th codecs,

Mutly

250 posts

Master Geek
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#88870 1-Oct-2007 09:38

Hiho,

Just to add...

1. There are various apps, like msdvrtoolbox which you can set to 'watch' certain directories (in this case, your recorded tv dir), convert the files to mpeg, then compress to divx. All automated so you can have it run early morning, or whenever you are not using the box.

3. Codec wise you can install the free Dscaler mpeg2 codec for DVD/mpeg2 playback. I tend to run dscaler, divx, vobsub and the ac3 codecs for MP. This tends to cover everything without having to install some horrid codec pack. I tend to set the deinterlacing to defaults.

I can't brain today. I have the dumb.

cranz

675 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#88871 1-Oct-2007 10:22

On the codecs note:

I can't get x264 .mkv files to play in MediaPortal, have any of you successfully got this to work and if so which codecs are you using?

In media portal i select the file, it waits 3 seconds where you cant do anything, then it sits on the list like nothing has happened. I've tried installed ffdshow but its a no go

any ideas?

sbiddle

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#88872 1-Oct-2007 10:26

cranz: On the codecs note:

I can't get x264 .mkv files to play in MediaPortal, have any of you successfully got this to work and if so which codecs are you using?

In media portal i select the file, it waits 3 seconds where you cant do anything, then it sits on the list like nothing has happened. I've tried installed ffdshow but its a no go

any ideas?

Can you play them using Windows Media Player at all?

If not you need to install Haali Media Splitter which will enable .mkv files to be played by anything that uses DirectShow. mkv is a wrapper for MPEG4 so needs a filter to extract it.

cranz

675 posts

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#88877 1-Oct-2007 10:46

Well that was simple lol thanks sbiddle, I forget VLC likes to keep its codec to itself