"Branta’s guide to Managing Recordings on CubeRevo and IPBox9000"

It seems to me that when many users get their CubeRevo, the first thing they want to do is to decode scrambled transmissions (for educational purposes only, of course). And there are many posts in many forums to help with this.

The first thing that I wanted to do was be able to make recordings reliably, and then archive the best of them to DVD. Of course this is illegal if you share the DVDs. Believe it or not, it's even illegal if you watch that DVD more than once ! The copyright laws may be be different where you live, but most places the use of a video recorder does NOT permit you to keep that recording indefinitely for repeated viewing. However you can argue that you made the DVD just because you wanted to delay watching that film until long after your HDD would have been full. But also note that the BBC have been very happy to broadcast very old programmes (for which they erased the original tapes) by using recordings that viewers have saved.

O.k., that's the legal disclaimer out of the way !

Now DGStation and ab-com publish manuals that tell as little as possible about the way these boxes actually work. As I learned more and more about making and transferring recordings with my IPBox9000 (thanks to forums like Sat-Universe, and also by just trying things to see what worked) I wrote it down.

Here is the result (so far), "Branta’s guide to Managing Recordings on CubeRevo and IPBox9000".

Probably experienced users will find nothing here that they don't already know, but I hope it will help a few beginners.

Actually I hope that some experienced users will read it, too. That way I might get to learn better ways of doing things, that I can pass on in future revisions of this document.

healeydave

I think you will struggle with the IPBOX9000 if you don't use a PC. Without PCEditor it's crippled, and I'm not aware that PCEditor runs on a MAC (but I could be wrong). However, scheduling recordings remotely requires only a browser, a MAC will be fine for that.

"Not living up to expectations" is doubtless a function of one's expectations, but I've been hugely disappointed with products from Topfield and Arion, if I find the IPBOX less disappointing it's perhaps only because I understood better what I was getting into. Sorry I can't comment on the TiVo (I'm too young :bs.

If you are in the UK and your main interest is UK programmes, then I hope you are aware of the Humax FOXSAT-HDR. I have one and it's absolutely superb (am I allowed to say this in a CubeRevo forum ?), especially for the rest of the family. It is virtually bug-free, the way it works shows a lot of "polish", it runs cool and very quiet even when recording HD programs (those aren't a random selection of it's features, they are mentioned because they are things that IPBOX users can only dream about !). A possible snag is that to pull the recording files off (e.g. to make DVDs) you really need a USB HDD formatted as EXT3 (Linux), not a problem except I don't know how you would read an EXT3 HDD from a MAC. Also there is a "big brother" mechanism whereby the broadcaster can disallow the transfer of specific recording files out of the box (at present this is applied only to all BBC HD broadcasts).

The FOXSAT-HDR has quickly become the main PVR in use in my house, but it is poor when you step outside the "FREESAT" environment, e.g. you have to drop out of Freesat to watch non-freesat stations, but then recordings set using the Freesat EPG will fail. So my IPBOX is not quite relegated to "just a toy", it is the box we would use to watch and record non-Freesat stations, and to record UK stuff where we really want to cover all bases (also no protection on BBC HD files).

Thanks, Ararat

This is great stuff, Ararat, thanks.

I'll certainly include it in the next revision of the document. In fact it's well worth putting out a new version of the document just to get your additions published.

Sadly I can't promise I'll get that far this weekend, even though you sent me the addition in a form that's easy to add. Maybe sometime during next week.

Here is the second revision

Ararat's contribution was just too good to wait any longer, so here is v2 of the document.

Updated to include making MP3s from Radio recordings

As the 2009 BBC Promenade Concert season approaches, I was determined to finally sort out a neat way of making MP3 files from recordings made on my IPBOX.

Thanks to "VLC media player" it's really quite easy (and free) so I updated the recordings guide to show how it works.

This isn't necessarily the only method. As ever, if you know a better way, then please let me know !

Sample Rate when making MP3s

I learned a little more about making MP3 files, this is mainly a note to myself for a few items to add in v4 of the document.

On the same page where the bitrate for MP3 output is selected, VLC Media Player also allows a choice of Sample Rate (11250, 22500, 44100, 48000 are the only choices). 44.1kHz is the default (normal CD Sample Rate), but it is likely that the transport stream from the IPBOX has data sampled at 48kHz, because this is nearly universal for DVB-S transmissions.

To find out the Sample Rate of the IPBOX file, open it in VLC Media Player and choose Tools > Media Information > Codec Details. Here is shown the Sample Rate and the Bitrate.

I would recommend that to minimise loss of quality that you choose the same Sample Rate and Bitrate for the MP3 output. Of course the Bitrate is inextricably associated with sound quality, but by choosing the same Sample Rate as the input stream there will be less processing required (conversions are about 25% quicker if we don't ask for a different Sample Rate) and less processing must mean less degradation in quality (though I accept this might be marginal).

The finished MP3 file size is the same whatever Sample Rate you choose (but of course the file size will vary according to Bitrate).

The only reason you might choose to convert from 48kHz to 44.1kHz is if you know you will want to make a "regular" CD from this MP3 file (normally it would not make sense to expand the compressed format, but you might want to make a normal CD for compatibility with an old CD player that won't handle MP3 CDs).

Thanks to the "Bitrate Plugin" from Kneubi (included in the R9580 image from NLB) you can see the Sample Rate and Bitrate of any Radio station before you even make a recording, just tune a channel and start the plugin.

Here are some typical Sample Rates and Bitrates of Radio Stations as reported by Kneubi's plugin:


You could also use the plugin to see if the audio quality of a TV channel is good enough (many are 192 or 256kbps) to be worth extracting the soundtrack of a TV programme (e.g. concert or opera) as an MP3 file.

I'm still working on a method to extract the audio from TV programs as MP3s. It will almost certainly involve both VideoReDo and VLC Media Player.

Bitrates that change

Back in July I wrote :

Thanks to the "Bitrate Plugin" from Kneubi (included in the R9580 image from NLB) you can see the Sample Rate and Bitrate of any Radio station before you even make a recording, just tune a channel and start the plugin.

Click to expand...

Since then I noticed that the bitrate for some radio stations changes from time to time. I'm not aware that this applies to any BBC stations, but France Musique is broadcast at 256kbps only for their "premium" content in the evenings, during the daytime the bitrate can drop surprisingly low for a music channel (I think I saw 64kbps once).

Sorry, I can't guess what will happen if you have a .TRP file that spans the period when the bitrate changed !

Also an issue has arisen that prevents VLC Media Player from reading .TRP files. It looks like changes that DGStation has made recently result in a transport stream file structure that VLC won't read. Happlily VideoRedo opens both the old and the new .TRP files, but that is no help for Radio recordings.

I have a revised solution for getting .MP3 files from .TRP files (based on "ProjectX" and "Super" instead of VLC Media Player) which I hope to post later today.

Opening the latest TRP files

The Problem

After upgrading my IPBOX from Firmware R9580 I found that VLC Media Player would not open the TRP files produced. Happily, VideoRedo still opens TRP files that contain TV recordings, but it never did open radio recordings, so VLC Media Player had been my preferred way to get Radio recordings into MP3 format.

Actually it was quite a few weeks before I noticed this problem, by which time I had many hours of Radio recordings waiting for conversion, and I was concerned that I may not be able to convert them to MP3 at all. But eventually I found another way.

There are two new programs (both free) that I needed to process Radio recordings made on my IPBOX into MP3 files, "ProjectX" and "SUPER". I guess you still need VLC Media Player even though it doesn't open the latest TRP files, because it remains the requirement for streaming from the IPBOX to your PC (using the webif to start the streaming process).

ProjectX

homepage is at http://project-x.sourceforge.net/, downloads do not consist of a Windows installable package as this runs under Java. If this is a problem for you (it was for me !) then look for the "portable" version at http://portableapps.com/node/12911. However the download possibilities there are limited, and the easiest download of ProjectX Portable that I found was linked from http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ProjectX.

With the "portable" version there is still no installation to do, just unzip the supplied files and run projectX.exe.

SUPER

Get SUPER from www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

SUPER is supposed to open Transport Streams, but (like VLC Media Player) doesn't seem to open the latest DGStation TRP files (that's why we need ProjectX as well).


I guess it's possible that you may need some CODECs in addition to these programs, I didn't but maybe another program (VLC Media Player ?) had already installed them for me.

Method

In ProjectX drag a TRP file into the files window at the bottom. Left-click to highlight it, now right-click and choose "assign action type directly" > "demux". Now hit the "QuickStart" button. This will produce an MP2 file in the same directory as the TRP file.

ProjectX has the option of placing multiple input files into the work area for batch processing. This seems to produce a single MP2 file that is the sum of the input files, which isn't what I wanted anyway, so I haven't yet resolved some other issues I had with multiple input files.

ProjectX also produces a log for each demuxed file, which shows the sample rate and bitrate, these numbers will be needed in the next step.

Open SUPER and in box "1. Select Output Container" at the top select "MP3 (Audio Only)". In box "3. Select the Output Audio Codec" choose "MP3" (if this didn't get selected automatically). SUPER has a batching facility that I find very useful (especially as the process is very slow indeed), just drag one or more MP2 files into the files window at the bottom.

In the green "VIDEO" panel ensure the "Disable Video" box is ticked (usually done automatically as there is no video content in the MP2 files we just gave it).

In the blue "AUDIO" panel choose the sample rate and bitrate that matches the input files (read from the ProjectX logfile) unless you have a special reason to want a different sample rate and bitrate.

Ensure all the files you dragged in have a tick in the "Active" box, and hit the "Encode (Active Files)" button. Eventually you will get an MP3 file corresponding to each MP2 file (and in the same directory).

Actually you don't need SUPER, VLC Media Player will work on the MP2 file to convert it to MP3 (and faster, too, I think). But I like the simplicity of working with multiple files in SUPER (I can give it ten files to convert, then go and walk the dogs, they are all done when I return).


One day I'll add this procedure to "Branta's Guide", but that will have to wait, I have no spare time at the moment !