BTV Firewire Recording Updated

One major beer I have for the VLC Media player version 0.8.6c was its lack of a control interface in fullscreen mode. Actually, this could be chosen in the options, but too many tweaks seemed to make the whole application stop working. I recently updated my media streaming VLC 0.9.2 and while it's new skin and interface were welcome improvements, they did not come without a cost.

The firewire template in BTV Externinator is even further from correct syntax for DirectShow streaming. The official documentation is available at http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/play-howto-en.html.

In parameters 1 the field now needs to look like this:

dshow:// :dshow-vdev="Motorola AV/C Tuner Device" :dshow-adev="" :sout '#duplicate{dst=rtp{mux=ts,access=file,url="

And under parameters 2:

"}} -I'

Note the single quotes (') around the sout call and the new rtp command used to receive the netwrok stream. More details are outlined in the release notes.

Previous Notes:

Thanks to Snapstream Media community contributors like Fonceur, my project has finally achieved its original goal. One major hurdle I had to overcome on my own was related to the use of the latest VLC Media Player (0.8.6c).

The selectable firewire template available in BTV Externinator composes a command string that causes errors upon execution. Specifially, the parameters 1 line must be "dst=" rather than "url=" and any reference to "dummy" in parameters 2 must be removed, leaving only closing quotes and curly braces.

Another important parameter for successful recordings is the addition of a delay value to allow for some lag when the DCT has to tune to a new channel. I have mine set to the maximum, 10 seconds.

Sticking it to the Man

I finally recorded an HD movie onto my PC over a firewire connection to my Motorola DCT6200! It only took me 8 months to figure it out, and I have yet to perfect the unattended recording to media over firewire, but it's a major breakthrough.

Hardware Rundown

The TV/monitor was the most important piece of the package: the Acer 3705 supports 1080p Resolution and has DVI, HDMI and 5 component inputs.

The PC is encased in a Thermaltake Tenor "Media Center" box. The mainboard is an ASUSTeK P5N32-SLI with onboard wireless.

The main video is powered by two EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT's. Ample power for every game I've seen so far.

True to the HTPC concept, there is also an ADS Tech HDTV tuner card.

Finally, there's my Motorola DCT 6200 HDTV set top box (STB) for the best hockey experience apart from being there live!

HD Recording Over Firewire

Overall, I'm very happy with the ease of use with Beyond TV 4.61 tuner software. What it lacks however is a native feature for a virtual tuner through a firewire port. I have managed to record television in High Definition manually using Video LAN's VLC Player.

First you need a 6pin to 6pin firewire cable connected from the left port of the STB (viewed from the front. Note that some DCT's have been reported to stream the signal from the other port.)

If your port is active, you will see 3 or 4 newly detected devices. When prompted by windows to install drivers, hit cancel on everything.

Download firewire.zip and unzip it to a directory. Power off the cable box, reboot. Power on the cable box.

When asked to install drivers for the detected hardware, manually install drivers for the Tuner, and the Panel device by pointing the driver installation to the directory where you unzipped firewire.zip. On the one or two unknown devices, choose cancel.

Now go into your device manager, and disable the one or two unknown devices so they don't bother you every time you boot. All you need is support for your tuner device and the panel device.

Open the VLC Player. Choose File => open capture device. Next to video device name, click refresh. Your tuner should now be in the list. Select it. With your STB remote, tune the STB to an unencrypted channel (no 5C)... in Canada, CTV or CBC.

Hit play. You should see video over firewire from your STB!

If nothing is playing on any channel, you likely have a problem or your cable company is 5c'ing the content. For Shaw Cable in BC, Canada, this is not the case

Create a shortcut to the VLC executable and set the parameters of the target attribute to:

"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" "dshow:// :dshow-vdev="Motorola AV/C Tuner Device" :dshow-adev="" :dshow-size="" :no-dshow-config "

The device name is listed in the Customize drop list when you open VLC Player, select File > Open Capture Device > DirectShow tab. Click the "Refresh List" button next to Video Device name and select your device from the list.

To record, I use that same dialog box and tick the Stream/Save checkbox. Open the Settings panel and tick "File" and next to that "Dump Raw Output". Now it will create a file using any encapsulation method you chose (I use MPEG PS). Next step: get BTV to do this for me!