H.264 Pro Recorder – Who’s using it? How’s it working?

[Mike Squires]

We use the ATEM TVS, which has the H.264 encoder built into it. I’m pretty sure it uses the same SoC as the H.264 ProRecorder, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

In our experience, the quality isn’t so good, even capturing at native resolution with maximum bitrate (20Mbps). The problem is that it de-interlaces even native interlaced video, and it doesn’t do a very good job at it. There is a lot of stair-stepping in round objects, such as a basketball, people’s shoulders, etc…

It also adds quite a bit of noise to the video, less noticeable when capturing HD, but very noticeable when capturing SD. It almost looks like mosquito noise being added.

We’ve only tested it capturing 1080i and NTSC, so 720p may look better, since it’s natively progressive.

I’ve asked BMD if these issues would/could be fixed via a firmware update, and their response basically was “that’s to be expected at those bitrates”.

I personally find that odd, since I get much better results encoding in MPEG2 at 8Mbps (SD) and 15Mbps (HD) using Premiere Pro CS5.5. Encoding the same video in MPEG2, keeping it interlaced, round objects don’t exhibit stair-stepping and no noticeable noise is added. I get the same results encoding in h.265 via CS5.5, so imo, something is wrong with the SoC (or firmware) that BMD is using.

Just my $.02.

[Mike Squires]

Sorry, that last sentence should have said “h.264”, not h.265, just a typo.

[Joel Hufford]

I just finished demoing a unit and was disappointed to learn that the device does not allow you to select between analog or embedded digital audio when recording an HDMI or HD-SDI stream.

Also, when capturing an analog component signal (like from a DVCAM deck) the unit captures and digitizes the entire video signal, meaning the active and “inactive” portions of the signal. This produces an h.264 video with black borders around the active portion of the video signal. This was also the case with BMD first h.264 recorder, however, that model allow you to crop out portions of the signal so all that was captured was the active video. This is not the case with Media Express and the h.264 Pro Recorder. I spoke with BMD Support and was told that this was the case and there was nothing that could be done about it. To me, this is a huge drawback.

All in all I really wanted this box to work, it seemed like it would be a great tool, especially for the price. However I don’t think that we’re going to be able to use them for our workflow. Perhaps in a year or so BMD will make some improvements that will change my mind.

joel
Corporate and Special Event Staging Services
http://www.pacificstaging.com

[Lindsay Krause]

My department recently bought two of these capture boxes, one for each of the studios we run daily. We needed a cost-effective solution for recording our daily operations.

I have noticed that they are a little bit glitchy, but the biggest issue I am currently facing (and I have read that others have also had this issue) is that the audio drifts further away from the video as time goes on. For short recordings, it isn’t a problem. But a couple weeks ago, we recorded something for about 2.5 hours and the drift is multiple seconds off by the end.

We are still running SD, so I notice some of the fuzziness that others are talking about, but mostly when I pull the video into Final Cut Pro. I notice that if I convert the file using Compressor first, that I don’t have as much of an issue. The FCP conversion just doesn’t cut it. I do also notice some of the edges being lined instead of smooth.