Tv to dvd

[s2c]

Hoping someone can correct me in my attempts to burn tv to dvd. I have read some posts and guides but I may have missed something.
Im downloading tv content through a Medion tv card onto a Medion Laptop using Powercinema. Using composite tv. The file is saved as an MPG. While it is downloading it plays fine, but when I play this from the hard drive it is quite noticably jerky. very stop start. When I burn it to a dvd using Nero express 3 the result is also jerky on stand alone and laptop. I would suspect my media but as it also plays dodgy thru the powercinema prog then i am at a loss as to why this is happening. When I go to burn the movie after slicing and dicing, nve3 comes up witha box saying my "title contains more ntsc than pal, but will be exported in pal by using the current settings." It asks do I wish to change the settingsto ntsc to match the majority of the material. I always say no. ( said yes tonight to check.
Q. why is the content in NTSC? I am in region 4. My dvd region was defaulted to region 1 and unchanged since I bought the laptop. (I changed it today to region 4)
Q. Why the stop start quality of the recorded material?
Q Anyway to turn off the preview while NVE3 is burning? The jerkiness is even more pronounced on the preview.
I tried to use TMPGEnc dvd author to do the deed instead of nve3 but when i try to add a videocomposite mpg file it always says it encountered a fatal error of wrong resolution(640X480) and wrong frame rate,(29.97fps)cant be used with this resolution.
Q. Where do i adjust all this ? res and fps? is it part of the laptop, the tv card or the software? Cant find any settings of this sort in powercinema or nve3.
Everything i try to do is met with errors or wrong this or that .very frustrating.

[moonrocks]

I don't know anything about Medion tv cards, or Powercinema, so unfortunately I can't give you any specific help with those. Hopefully, somebody else can give you some answers there. But just some general ideas that might help...

Don't confuse the different DVD regions with PAL/NTSC. There are region 4 countries that are NTSC (Mexico) and region 4 countries that are PAL (Australia).

If the playback in your captured .mpg is jerky then you should stop there and solve that problem. No point in burning it to DVD, it won't get better.

First thing, based on your Nerovision message when it asked you to convert to PAL I'm going to guess you're in a PAL country. If yes, and your capturing video at 640x480 with 29.97fps, then right there is an issue because those aren't PAL settings.

Make sure your video settings in your capture software are set for a PAL TV signal. See if there is a setting in your Medion tv card setup to select the video format. That's the first place you'd want to check for video settings. Next check your capture software. You want to make sure everybody is geared up for a PAL signal.

If your capture settings don't specifically designate "PAL" as an option, but instead allow you to select resolutions and frame rates, then typical PAL settings would be 720x576, 704x576 or 352x288, all at 25 fps.

After you tweak your capture settings, see if you get better results playing back the .mpg file. If you're still getting jerky playback of the .mpeg file then try dropping down to the lower PAL res of 352x288. Your CPU and memory might not be enough to capture full res at good quality. Free up as much memory as possible while capturing. Don't have anything else running. Defrag and have plenty of free space on your drive.

Just to get an overview of some of the basics of capturing, this is a good guide:

http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/video-capture.htm

Sorry I can't be more help specifically with the Medion TV card or Powercinema. But there have to be settings in there somewhere you can change. Not sure how to turn off the preview in Nerovision.

When Nerovision asks you: "title contains more ntsc than pal, but will be exported in pal by using the current settings." This is only because your current video settings in Nerovision are set to PAL but Nerovision is noticing that this .mpg is NTSC, so it's asking you if you want to change to NTSC settings to keep the original video format, or convert the video to PAL. If you say yes it's going to export the video as NTSC, if you say no it will convert it to PAL. So if you want a PAL DVD then say no and let Nerovision use the PAL settings.

Good luck!

[s2c]

Thanks Moonrocks,
Your reply gave me food for thought and i did a bit of research. Checked out my powercinema by cyberlink, no settings, so i looked up their website and dropped them a line asking about the fps/ pal ntsc etc. hopefully will hear back from them in a day or two. I also rung up my laptop tech support and they didnt have a clue. Tried to tell me to convert the mpg to avi and it should stop the jerky playback. I could try it but i shouldnt have to. They said they would look into it and get back within a day or two also.
You mentioned the Nero settings, where would i find those?, i do know about the Nero info tool, but i cant see anywhere it mentions what frame rate and resolution it is set to.
Ta.

[s2c]

Just read Nicky's video solution ,thankyou, seems to hit the nail.As you said, I just have to find out how to change those settings.............
One question I have, the capture formats are MJPEG,MPEG-1,MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, what does that make my capture when it is called MPG?

[drfsupercenter]

It can be MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 AFAIK. MPEG-4 is .mp4.

[moonrocks]

You could load your .mpg file in Gspot. It will give you stats on your video file - resolution, fps, bitrate etc. Click the "render" button towards the bottom and it will let you know if it's mpeg1 or mpeg2.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

[s2c]

Yep, drf, you are right, they are mpeg-2, it says it right there on gspot, unfortunately moonrocks, it cant tell me anything about my bitrate or fps, it says mpeg is an unsupported format.. aaaaarrggh. is nothing compatible in this world? Got an answer back from cyberlink, they reckon pal or ntsc was selected when the app was first set up. I vaguely recall i had to pick a resolution but as I was pretty ignorant i went with the default, they never came right out and said do you want PAL or NtSC. Now Im trying to find out from them if i can change it without having to reinstall the software. Its part of a bundle.

[moonrocks]

I took a little bit of a look at PowerCinema. There is no setting where you can specifically designate PAL or NTSC. It seems that Powercinema selects the video mode simply by you designating your country. Go to Settings, TV, Signal Settings, Region, then select your country.

As for quality of the recording, Powercinema offers only 3 generic choices: Good, Better, Best, with no description as to what resolutions or bitrates you're getting with each. Obviously choose Best for now to see if it helps with the choppy playback. Go to Settings, TV, Recording Settings, Recording Quality, to set your quality.

Record an .mpg then see what kind of playback you get and check it out with Gspot to see if it has a PAL framerate. After selecting a PAL country in Powercinema and you still end up with an NTSC framerate in your .mpg then I'd have to think your capture card is causing this. Try to find the setup utility for your Medion capture card. If you can't find it, then you could try a generic tweak utility like Christweak to attempt to change the PAL/NTSC settings for your card.

http://www.chris-pc.com/tweak/

There's also freeware capture software like VirtualVCR or Virtualdubmod that you could try, but you'd end up with .avi captures which you'd have to re-encode, so hopefully you can get Powercinema to work with your Medion card.

[LT. Columbo]

for mpeg 2 file info try virtualdubMOD

[s2c]

Yes, moonrocks I've seen those settings and I've made sure I have Oz as the region, my quality was on Good. I put it on Best, wow did that make the size of the file hit the roof.
I found out that if you put the cursor on the file in MY MEDIA FILES in nve3 it pops up with File type, Res, Aspect, Frame rate.(after all that!) And Yes, the jerky play backs all had the frame rate of 29.97 and a res of 640 X 480 (NTSC?). But somehow , I dont know WHAT i changed but now it is recording in 25 fps and 720X576 resolution -pal.!!! Clean playback....
yay
when I find out what i twiddled I'll let you know.
I did change the settings of quality and country, to experiment. The size of the file changed but nothing else. not even when i changed the country.

Thank you all very much for your helpful advice and suggestions.

[nadia.ok]

hi guys... i want to use my dvd burner to record programmes from TV... is that possible ? and what do i need to do ? please help ....

[copyless]

Do you have a TV tuner card, like Hauppauge or anything? If not you will need one.

It may be just as easy and cost effective to buy a stand alone recorder, I mean I have seen DVD recorders for $80 lately. I paid only $299 for mine and it is a DVD/VCR recorder that also reocrds DVD DL +/-R/RW.

If TV recording is your main option, beware that if you do buy an inexpensive stane alone unit, that if it is movies off of cable/satellites you are trying to record (ie, pay per view, HBO Show, etc.) they sometimes still carry the copy protection. In other words your stand alone will not record certain movies from the TV.

So you may want to buy the TV tuner card, only you know what your objective is, as with me I like to do it all, so I have a stand alone and no tuner card on my PC, just a DVD burner on it.

[nadia.ok]

I want to record both movies and TV series ,, so are u suggesting i should get a tv tuner card and the recorder like the one u have ?

[Kabuchan]

Do you have a TV tuner card, like Hauppauge or anything? If not you will need one...So you may want to buy the TV tuner card, only you know what your objective is, as with me I like to do it all, so I have a stand alone and no tuner card on my PC, just a DVD burner on it.

I have TiVo and a DVD Recorder. I have not tried to back up the shows I have saved in TiVo. But will this work? The Recorder can use:

DVD-RW+R
DVD-RW-R
Jpeg
MP3

Does this mean I have to get a TV tuner card too?

[Kabuchan]

Guess my next question is if its legal. I don't want to do anything I'm not supposed to.