Is there a registry edit or piece of software that can change the recording bitrate?  I love to bump up the bitrate to try and reduce artifacts in fast action shows.  And yes, I do currently have the record quality set at the highest setting within mce.

PS - I'm using a pvr-250 card...

I had the same question...

Search for board MCE Customizer. It had options to set the Fair, Good, Best bitrates.

Hi, You could look the following registry key :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording
and the following Parameter : EncodingQuality

I have mine set to :

3000000
4500000
6000000
9000000

I have a PVR 250 MCE card also

I think you may have to reboot for the change to take effect,

You might want to check this thread also :

http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=41&MessageID=86997&TopicPage=1

Regards,

I've been messing around with MCE and iv managed to get digital quality for Live TV and Recordings. Now because not everyone has the same system specs, these settings may not work for everyone. I'm currently using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150MCE and i highly recommend this capture card. I've used an all-in-wonder card in the past which uses software encoding and it doesn't even come close to the video quality of a hardware encoding capture card.

First off, before you make any changes to your system, do yourself a favor and make a backup. I use Acronis True Image, and it has never let me down. Using windows System Restore just doesn't cut it.

If you aren't using InterVideo as your DVD Decoder, go get it now. It comes with WinDVD and i highly recommend you get the Platinum version. Then make sure you’re using it as you default video decoder using Microsoft’s "Video Decoder Checkup Utility". Also another tip, if your updating your video decoder i recommend you uninstall any previous versions and run a registry cleaner before installing the latest version.

With regards to motion blurring and choppiness. To fix this problem i enabled DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) and Hardware Motion Compensation (HWMC) through the registry. These settings seem to be apart of the video decoder, and i've read that not all video cards support these settings.

Here are my registry settings:
note* you'll have to restart your computer before any registry changes take effect.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
"HWMC"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
"HWMC"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\MCE\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"Dxva"=dword:00000001

Try these settings, they should make a difference. Aslo make sure "DsContinuousRate" is set to 1 or the video will stick when ff and rw'ing. The settings above seem to work just fine.

Here's my EncodingQuality settings:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording]
"EncodingQuality"  3000000, 4500000, 6000000, 8500000

Here are some other Hauppauge WinTV settings that make a nice difference. The first thing you want to do is add the below "HcwSaveEncoderSettings" to your registry. This will allow the below settings to save after you restart your computer. After you add this to your registry restart your computer before making any further changes.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwPP2\DriverData]
"HcwSaveEncoderSettings"=dword:00000001

Now that your settings will save you can use GraphEdit to make some changes. Using GraphEdit, go to: Graph > Insert Filters > Multiplexer Devices > Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Encoder and Insert Filter. Then right click on the filter and select properties. Under the "Hauppauge ECP Video" tab change the Bitrate Average to "6000", the Peak to "12000" and P Spacing to "1". Then under the "Dynamic Noise Reduction" tab i changed the "Temporal Static Level" to 0. Try changing this to something between 0 and 3, so see what looks best for your system.

You can also adjust the sharpness of you Hauppauge WinTV card, although i find the default setting is fine. With the current drivers the default settings is 4.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwPP2\DriverData]
"HcwSharpness"= "4"  note* the default setting may be different.

Okay one more setting, search through your registry for "DefAvgBitRate". Increasing the Decimal value for this registry setting seems to make a big difference in picture quality. The default settings is something like "20000000", try settings this value to "85000000" or even higher. I've actually set this value to as high as "850000000" count the zeros, and the picture quality got significantly better. I suggest trying to find the highest value your computer will handle without any problems.

I hope this helps some of you out there.  I can now watch Live TV and Recordings on a 57" HDTV without any noticeable loss of quality. Here's a screenshot.

---

xpMCE 2005
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE
InterVideo DVD Decoder

Great article erdaka.  I just applied this and my video is much better!  Very crisp considering it is just 480res.  Even in Zoom Mode 4, things look good.

TX!

It seems that I can not change the recording bitrate...

I use a PVR2000 and MCE2005. I tried the registry settings but whatever I do I have the same results: 920kBps as I calculate (I am not sure if I do it OK but the size of the recorded file is allways the same for a specific time).

I tried also to change the settings that exist in the pvr software that came with the tuner card but nothing changes (there are two settings: compression level and bitrate target - the first is 600 and the second 6000).

1) Do I miss something?

2) Does the recording quality affect the viewing quality too?

 

 

erdaka:

I've been messing around with MCE and iv managed to get digital quality for Live TV and Recordings. Now because not everyone has the same system specs, these settings may not work for everyone. I'm currently using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150MCE and i highly recommend this capture card. I've used an all-in-wonder card in the past which uses software encoding and it doesn't even come close to the video quality of a hardware encoding capture card.

First off, before you make any changes to your system, do yourself a favor and make a backup. I use Acronis True Image, and it has never let me down. Using windows System Restore just doesn't cut it.

If you aren't using InterVideo as your DVD Decoder, go get it now. It comes with WinDVD and i highly recommend you get the Platinum version. Then make sure you’re using it as you default video decoder using Microsoft’s "Video Decoder Checkup Utility". Also another tip, if your updating your video decoder i recommend you uninstall any previous versions and run a registry cleaner before installing the latest version.

With regards to motion blurring and choppiness. To fix this problem i enabled DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) and Hardware Motion Compensation (HWMC) through the registry. These settings seem to be apart of the video decoder, and i've read that not all video cards support these settings.

Here are my registry settings:
note* you'll have to restart your computer before any registry changes take effect.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
"HWMC"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\Common\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
"HWMC"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\InterVideo\MCE\VideoDec]
"DsContinuousRate"=dword:00000001
"Dxva"=dword:00000001

Try these settings, they should make a difference. Aslo make sure "DsContinuousRate" is set to 1 or the video will stick when ff and rw'ing. The settings above seem to work just fine.

Here's my EncodingQuality settings:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording]
"EncodingQuality"  3000000, 4500000, 6000000, 8500000

Here are some other Hauppauge WinTV settings that make a nice difference. The first thing you want to do is add the below "HcwSaveEncoderSettings" to your registry. This will allow the below settings to save after you restart your computer. After you add this to your registry restart your computer before making any further changes.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwPP2\DriverData]
"HcwSaveEncoderSettings"=dword:00000001

Now that your settings will save you can use GraphEdit to make some changes. Using GraphEdit, go to: Graph > Insert Filters > Multiplexer Devices > Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Encoder and Insert Filter. Then right click on the filter and select properties. Under the "Hauppauge ECP Video" tab change the Bitrate Average to "6000", the Peak to "12000" and P Spacing to "1". Then under the "Dynamic Noise Reduction" tab i changed the "Temporal Static Level" to 0. Try changing this to something between 0 and 3, so see what looks best for your system.

You can also adjust the sharpness of you Hauppauge WinTV card, although i find the default setting is fine. With the current drivers the default settings is 4.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hcwPP2\DriverData]
"HcwSharpness"= "4"  note* the default setting may be different.

Okay one more setting, search through your registry for "DefAvgBitRate". Increasing the Decimal value for this registry setting seems to make a big difference in picture quality. The default settings is something like "20000000", try settings this value to "85000000" or even higher. I've actually set this value to as high as "850000000" count the zeros, and the picture quality got significantly better. I suggest trying to find the highest value your computer will handle without any problems.

I hope this helps some of you out there.  I can now watch Live TV and Recordings on a 57" HDTV without any noticeable loss of quality. Here's a screenshot.

Anyone have success with this theory under Vista MC?   I have a PVR-350 but only doing the registry thing from the original poster doesn't affect the video bitrate, but more the audio bitrate I think.  If I look under the recorded file properties>details, the video bitrate still is about 81000 kbps no matter what number I put. 

I am willing to do this if it prove to be working.

Ask the Vista forum. We're just lowly MCE2005 users here!

I can confirm all these settings for Intervideo work with Vista. I'm getting a great picture now compared to before. The Hauppauge settings I can not find in the registry, if someone has experien ce and time to give us a rundown for VMC that would be great.

I downloaded DirectX SDK, but I don't see graphedit?????

---

OS: Windows XP SP3
CPU: Intel Dual core 2.8 ghz
RAM: 2046 MB
HDD: 160 GB NTFS
Monitor: Dell 1707FP (17 inch, DVI/VGA)
Video: VisionTek Radeon X1600 Pro, 256 MB HDMI, S-video
Tuner: ATI 550