PC recording software?

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NickRennie

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#93067 13-Nov-2011 12:16

Hi there,

Just after recommendations for software for recording Freeview terrestrial onto my PC. I have a HDhomerun tuner hooked up and use Windows Media Center to record stuff at the moment but the file sizes are huge (~3GB per half hour). What software do people use to capture 30min shows at 175MB and 60min shows at 350MB?

Thanks,

Nick

Disrespective

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#544798 13-Nov-2011 13:53

People don't record at smaller sizes they convert their original files to smaller sizes. Google 'dvr-ms converters' and see if something appeals.

B1GGLZ

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#544897 13-Nov-2011 21:45

NickRennie: Hi there,

the file sizes are huge (~3GB per half hour).

Nick

That's not huge for HD recording.
I use WinTV 7 and my HD .ts files are between 3 and 4Ghz per hour.
If you want smaller then convert to a smaller file type. I use VideoReDo for editing and it will also convert my .ts files to almost any othe file type. By converting to smaller files though you will lose quality.

sbiddle

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#544935 14-Nov-2011 06:15

NickRennie: Hi there,

Just after recommendations for software for recording Freeview terrestrial onto my PC. I have a HDhomerun tuner hooked up and use Windows Media Center to record stuff at the moment but the file sizes are huge (~3GB per half hour). What software do people use to capture 30min shows at 175MB and 60min shows at 350MB?

Thanks,

Nick

To get files that size they're typically converted to a lossy codec, with a low bitrate, are in SD, and don't have 5.1 sound. Transcode something to a low bitrate and you'll get a small file but with a massive hit in file quality. To be completely honest I'd never even contemplate watching a video from any source that was 350MB for a 60 min show because I know right now the picture quality will be poor.

If you want HD, 5.1 and a good picture quality you'll realise an hour long recording will come in at around 6GB. You will be able to compress this down to around 1.5GB with a loss of picture quality, but any more than this and the loss of quality becomes even more apparent.

With large HDD's as cheap as chips these days the easy solution is to add more space.

Ragnor

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#545030 14-Nov-2011 10:40

sbiddle:

To be completely honest I'd never even contemplate watching a video from any source that was 350MB for a 60 min show because I know right now the picture quality will be poor.

TV episode rips are incredibly popular, even the 350MB rips. Plenty of people just watch them on PC in a window while doing something else or netbooks, mobile devices etc.

Quite true they don't care that much about top image/sound quality, it's just a tv show after all...

Most 60min shows are ~40min without the ads and most shows are ripped to two "formats":

SD is usually something like 640x352, xvid encoded video, vbr mp3 audio, 350MB
HD is usually something like 1280x720, x264, 192kbs AC3, 1-1.2GB

You can do these type of video encoding on your recorded video to achieve similar results.

However like mentioned you will have to go from WTV/DVR-MS to TS/MPEG to whatever output you want.

JonnyCam

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#545193 14-Nov-2011 15:15

TV episode rips are incredibly popular, even the 350MB rips. Plenty of people just watch them on PC in a window while doing something else or netbooks, mobile devices etc.

Yeah, some of the TV rips I have watched @ 350mb for a 44 minute show are fine on my 50'' plasma.
It just maks it look like you are watching an SD channel on sky.