I have several hi-8 family tapes that I wanted to convert to view on my DirecTV receiver and PS3 using TVersity. I have a Haupaugge PVR250 that I use to input the recordings from the camcorder and record them using the included software known as WinTV2000. I used DVD long play recording setting which is the equivalent of 2.5GB for one hour of playback and a bit rate of 4.8 - 6.2 Mbits/sec. For those that are unaware, the PVR250 has a built-in encoder/decoder.
The first time I did this, the DirecTV receiver couldn't keep up with the playback of the final mpeg2 recording even with a wired connection from the Tversity server. The PS3 also stuttered and paused throughout and flipped the video upside down.
I decided to transfer the hi-8 tapes again, except this time I used ULead Studio Moviemaker 6.0 and the live capture function. I set the recording setting to DVD using MPEG 2 2Mbits/sec which is the equivalent of 1.4GB for one hour of playback and a bit rate of 1.6 - 2 Mbits/sec. The good news is the DirecTV receivers were able to play this version back great. No stuttering, picture right-side up and quality decent enough. Unfortunately though, the DirecTV doesn't have features to fast forward or rewind yet.
The PS3 does, however, but still played very choppy video, upside picture and basically was worthless. Here's what else I tried (that didn't work):
I tried uninstalling all codecs and installed the K-lite Full Codec pack (latest version). Tried "flip video" on ffsdshow to get the picture right side up on the PS3. Changed the hardware settings on Tversity between HR20 and PS3. The PS3 did actually play without stuttering once when I used the HR20 hardware settings in Tversity (as compared to the PS3 settings), but the picture was still flipped upside down.
By the way, any other movie I play on the PS3 plays great and these MPEG2 home videos look fine on my pc and now (after decoding in 2.0 Mbits) DirectTV.
Does anyone have any additional suggestions? I'm basically looking to move these hi-8 tapes into a format that is watchable. Basically, I would like it to be the size of a typical .avi movie file (about 1 GB) as compared to the 4GB they end up being for a 2 hour recording (under either DVD Long Play or Mpeg 2.0 Mbits). I also don't want to compromise the quality too much.
Maybe there's another software program I could use to take the raw recording from the hi-8 tape and transfer it (but this may be impossible with the PVR250's built-in hardware). I'd rather not convert later because an mpeg to .avi conversion can take hours. Add that to the two hours I've been spending transferring the tape and it's a long process. I'm sure the issue is something in the recording in both WinTV2000 and Ulead's software. Even when I turned these movies into DVD's I still couldn't load them on the PS3 without the aforementioned issues, but if I take another DVD movie I have and copy it to my computer it plays fine on the PS3.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.