Alternate encode format support

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ghindman
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2015 7:40 pm

Alternate encode format support

Post by ghindman » Wed Jun 03, 2015 8:11 pm

I'm a new Argus user, and I think I've found my way around, for the most part. But, what I can't seem to find, if it exists, is a way to change the encode format. Right now everything encodes to MPEG-2/TS files, which is good for quality, but clocks in at ~100MB per minute of video for 1080p streams. I record local OTA video that is largely watched and deleted so quality isn't always that important - it'd be nice to have the option to encode to something like h.264, and even potentially muck with encode parameters like resolution and bitrate.

Does this exist, and I'm just missing it somewhere?

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andrewNZ
Posts: 677
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:07 pm
Location: Dunedin, New Zealand

Re: Alternate encode format support

Post by andrewNZ » Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:13 am

Welcome. Unfortunately, there is no current option to do this. The .ts file is a raw dump of the broadcast data. HDTV can be as large as 8GB per hour. Transcoding on the fly can be very demanding and many systems simply wouldn't handle it.

There are options for converting the file, but if you're watching and deleting, it may not be worth the effort.
You can fix it, or you can fix it until it's broken. I usually choose the latter.

Server: WHS 2011. Hauppauge HVR 2200. Avermedia A835. ArgusTV Server. EPG Collector.
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simonsays
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 11:56 am

Re: Alternate encode format support

Post by simonsays » Fri Dec 25, 2015 2:13 pm

As pointed out, this is not "recording". It is a raw dump of what comes from the tuner.

Because of this, digital PVR devices no longer need computing power and are found in the cheapest receivers with a USB-port. The recording itself is trivial.

Argus does a very good job of handling the scheduling of recordings as a Windows Service. Therefore one can use a normal Desktop-PC or a HTPC to act as a PVR - with many, many features only found on a software based plattform.

If your machine has the power to do recoding and you want to invest the money (computing costs energy and hdd space is cheap), you can define post recording actions for each schedule. That includes sending the .ts to a converter of your choice. If you can configure your converter to run from the command line without human interaction.

But since every recoding costs quality and recordings have commercials, pre and post recording time and multiple audiostreams, the better approach is to install a bigger hard disk and convert the files manually if you want to keep them.

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