Transcode with Hauppauge HVR 1600

[dmly]

Hi,
The Hauppauge hvr 1600 has a hardware-encoder so I can pretty much use this feature to lower my CPU usage.
When I stream from this device (pvr:///dev/video0) to a Windows Media player I need to transcode it to DIV3 and MP3 and wrap it inside a mux=asf and access=mmsh. This transcoding require expensive CPU usage.

My questions are
1. Can I stream from /dev/video0 to a windows PC without using much of my server CPU? If yes, what media player can I use in windows (my wild guess is VLC!).
2. If I just use hardware encoding , can I still scale/lower the video resolution down?

Thanks

[jalles]

1) Give us an idea of what kind of a box the HVR-1600 lives in - it may not be able to handle the mpeg2 on the PCI bus in the first place. (Not unlike mine).

2) You can lower the hardware encoding rate. I do not have complete documentation.

from: http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/manuals/qi-hvr-1600.pdf

MPEG1 VCD .65 Gigabytes/hour is probably the least you can do.

in v4l2 'Advanced Options' -
enter into 'v4l2 driver controls' box:
{stream_type=4}

(note: curly braces seem to be required, despite what the balloon says)
where:

• 0 = mpeg-2 transport stream (default)
  1 = mpeg-2 program stream
  2 = mpeg-1 system stream
  3 = mpeg-2 DVD-compatible stream
  4 = mpeg-1 VCD compatible Stream
  5 = mpeg-2 SVCD compatible stream

as far as I can tell.

from the command line, run v4l2-ctl to see the help, those commands can show you more detail. Apparently, you can set the bitrate, etc. manually, however I have not gone there.

good luck,

Jim A.

edit: spelling correction (I think it was a red balloon).

[dmly]

I am using Ubuntu 8.10 with this card.
The command I am using to stream is

cvlc --color pvr:///dev/video0:norm=ntsc:size=720x480:bitrate=3000000:maxbitrate=4000000 --cr-average 1000 --sout #transcode{scale=1,fps=25,width=352,height=288,vcodec=DIV3,acodec=mp3,vb=800,ab=96,channels=1,audio-sync,vfilter=deinterlace}:std{access=mmsh,mux=asf,dst=0.0.0.0:8090}

Thanks

[jalles]

ok, what CPU, clockrate, RAM, disk size?

[jalles]

Anyway, the moral of this story is to check the manufacturer' minimum hardware recommendations (that being Hauppauge). Even minimal Linux can't change that.

peace,

.ja.