[mythtv-users] HD-PVR Max quality settings?

[John P Poet]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Christopher Meredith
<chmeredith at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 5:06 PM, John P Poet <jppoet at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Christopher Meredith
>> <chmeredith at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not entire sure how to test how recording profiles work because
>>> I've never used them, but I want the HD-PVR to record at its highest
>>> possible quality setting. I am doing lossy commercial cutting so I
>>> need the source to be as high quality as possible. Because I wasn't
>>> sure what I was doing, I went into all the recording profiles and
>>> moved all the sliders to max. This did make the resulting recordings
>>> larger and some were noticeably better quality, but it seems to be
>>> inconsistent. For example, I recorded the pilot of Caprica off Syfy
>>> and it was noticeably blocky in dark scenes and accroding to
>>> mediainfo, the video bitrate was a paltry 4617 Kbps, which seems to me
>>> to be about 1/3 of the box's capabilities.
>>>
>>> Is there a "right" way to make the HD-PVR go balls to the wall?
>>
>> Using CBR will give you higher bitrate than VBR.  To get CBR, set the
>> peak to be *less* than the average.
>>
>> That being said, the quality is also highly dependent on the source.
>
> Thanks John. Would this produce different behavior than having the
> peak and average set to the same value?

If the peak is detected to be less than the average, that triggers CBR
mode using the average value for the bitrate.  In CBR mode, the peak
value is ignored.

Once the setup screens are converted to MythUI, I intend to re-work
that screen so it is more obvious how to toggle VBR/CBR.


John
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