On 23/05/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Bruce Markey</b> <<a href="mailto:bjm@lvcm.com">bjm@lvcm.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Tonight is the American Idol Finale. Having re-watched last<br>year's finale a few days ago, I was reminded of a few things<br>to be aware of that others may want to consider.<br><br>- Record this even of you don't think you care.
<br><br>- Add at least 15 minutes of End Late time. I'd recommend 29.<br><br>- Consider using a profile with a higher max bitrate and max audio.<br><br>Even if you think AI is tacky, one of the nice things about a<br>
DVR is that you can painlessly record things then delete even if<br>you don't watch (I always record more stuff than I actually watch).<br>If something happens that friends and co-workers talk about, you<br>can FF to see it for yourself. The finale last year was spectacular
<br>with many unannounced guests including Prince (on American Idol?).<br>Even if you don't care who wins, there may be bands or singers<br>you do want to see. If you've got enough cards and disk space,<br>there's no reason not to record it. The same holds true for the
<br>Super Bowl, Academy Awards, etc.<br><br>Fox is flexible with the timing like an awards show. If they run<br>late, the local news can wait. I believe last year ran ~11min<br>over (now that I've said that, they'll probably end on time ;-).
<br>15min should be enough to cover any slip but if you're into the<br>next time slot, might as well add 29. this is about a half hour<br>without intruding on shows that start on the next half hour. I<br>usually use 29 or 59 for sports. The show is two hours and adding
<br>another half hour shouldn't matter if you have hundreds of GB of<br>disk space.<br><br>It's best to set the extra time ahead of time and look at the<br>"Upcoming Recordings" page to see how things will fit. However,
<br>if a show is already recording when you realize that you may need<br>more time, you can go to the upcoming page or any other scheduling<br>page and press Enter then select "Change Ending Time" then add<br>more time on the fly.
<br><br>I used to think that a camera panning following a football player<br>running down a green field was a lot of motion and it is but this<br>is nothing compared to thousands of pieces of confetti swirling<br>all over the screen. This is hard to compress and looks like crap
<br>unless the maximum bitrate is high enough to somewhat show the<br>scene without too much losiness. Therefore, for hardware encoders,<br>you should use a profile where the "Max. Bitrate" is at least double<br>
the average "Bitrate" so it can do a better job during the confetti<br>drop and pyrotechnics at the end. Because this is a music show, it<br>makes sense to use the max audio bitrate. This wouldn't increase<br>
the file size too much but may (or may not) improve audio fidelity.<br><br>If you make changes to a profile, make sure to do a test recording<br>first to be sure there are no unwelcome surprises.</blockquote><div><br>Good info there, shame that in the UK it's not broadcasted until Friday... (unless they've moved it this week)
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