HDHR extend, file size

Playground Hardware
#1

Loving Channels + DVR so far. I shelled out for the Extend for its hardware transcoding for recordings. So far though, set to Heavy, it doesn’t seem like it’s saving much (if any) space. Recording the Late Show with Colbert, for example, the MPEG2 and H264 files are just about the same size (4GB). Validated the file types by looking at Get Info on MacOS. A Seinfeld or Big Bang Theory ep also seem to be about 2GB either way.

I wouldn’t want to go any lower than “heavy” because of picture quality, so am I really gaining that much? If not, and this is normal, tempted to return the Extend for a regular HDHR and save $75+.

Thanks Channels team and all!

#2

1 hour of video in mpeg2 is about 12GB. If your files are 4GB, they are almost certainly H264. I’m not sure if macOS get info shows the correct details or not.

#3

Interesting. Here’s the log for last night’s record:

2018/01/12 22:34:00 [TNR] Opened connection to 10574738 for ch42.1 [transcode=none]
2018/01/12 22:34:09 [DVR] Recording for job 1515818040-1 from 10574738 ch42.1 into "TV/The Late Show With Stephen Colbert/The Late Show With Stephen

and the previous (set to heavy):

2018/01/11 23:37:46 [DVR] Starting job 1515731640-1 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on ch=[42.1]
2018/01/11 23:37:47 [TNR] Opened connection to 10574738 for ch42.1 [transcode=heavy]

And the file sizes are about the same, 4.78GB. The HDHR itself is set to Default profile=none, but I believe that gets ignored anyway when DVR activates.

Thoughts? I’ll grab MediaInfo and look at the files too.

#4

That’s weird. It definitely says it’s using heavy. See what mediainfo says

#5

For the “heavy” session:

MPEG-TS: 4.45 GiB, 1h 5mn
1 Video stream: AVC
1 Audio stream: AC-3
4 Text streams: EIA-608 / EIA-608 / EIA-708 / EIA-708
…
AVC (Component) (High@L4)

For the “none” session:

MPEG-TS: 4.50 GiB, 1h 5mn
1 Video stream: MPEG Video
2 Audio streams: AC-3 / AC-3
4 Text streams: EIA-608 / EIA-608 / EIA-708 / EIA-708
…
MPEG Video (Version 2) (Main@High)

#6

Oops, didn’t realize I could View Details in the Recordings tab, but they confirm the above (MPEG2 vs MPEG 4).

#7

Huh that’s pretty strange they would be the same size.

#8

Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder whether I should complain :wink: I do notice that the Seinfeld ones are more disparate than I thought. (It’s also a different channel.) The MP4 is bitrate 9Mbps (2.2GB), the MPEG2 is 15Mbps (3.4GB), so that’s a pretty decent reduction.

Is it possible that some stations simply have a lower native bitrate? Colbert seems to be 9Mbps regardless of transcoder setting.

#9

Ok, to close this out, final dumb Q: will you ever plan on supporting automatic post-record transcode to h264? I’d like to save that $75, and/or get a 3 tuner with the money instead. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

#10

We do plan to support automatic transcoding/archiving at some point, yes. No ETA though, as we have quite a few other priorities this year.

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