Record While Playing Games?

[bones_1284]

I am thinking of buying a digital HD tuner and am wondering if it would be possible to play a game from one hard drive and record to another drive that I will buy, without effecting game performance or the recording at all, or at least very little difference in game performance and no effect to recording.

If it is possible would recording 2 programs at once with a twin tuner still be possible? Are there cards that do all the processing and don't rely on cpu, graphics card, or ram etc at all for recording without watching that would alow this or are they all like that anyway?

My PC:

ABIT NF7-S Motherboard

AMD XP2500+

512M Ram

Gecube ATI 9600XT Extreme

Any recommendations on cards would be great also, there are so many to choose from. And I don't have PCI-express so thats out.

Thanks in advance.

P.s. I did search but found conflicting info.

[therat]

I'm not a gamer and I have a considerably more high-end computer than yours, but I find recording programs in the background (up to 3 at a time) with WebScheduler uses very little power and in no way impedes anything else I may want to do while recording.

I'm sure there are others here who are gamers and who can give an experienced answer.

cheers

[AndrewWilliams]

I used to do my recording on the same PC that I played games on and it was fine most of the time. I got the occasional glitch in a recording presumably do to intensive hard disk or CPU activity or both but they were fairly rare.

[Redboy]

Ohhh gamer ? I'm heavy gamer myself. I wouldnt record while play game. I think it ok play light game not heavy game like HALF LIFE 2 or SIMS 2 ....Unless you have very very fast HARD DRIVE I think OK

[bones_1284]

Well, like I said I would be playing the game from one hard drive and recording to a completly different hard drive.

So I believe hard drive activity of the hard drive used for games and operating system etc should not effect the speed of the other hard drive which will be used for recording only?

Regarding CPU and other computer resources Ram etc. Do the cards rely on some cpu power, ram etc to record or do they have all hardware necessary to write directly to the hardrive?

[Redboy]

Well, like I said I would be playing the game from one hard drive and recording to a completly different hard drive.

Yeah why not. Go have try ?

bigger ram the better...

[joeybloggs]

Regarding CPU and other computer resources Ram etc. Do the cards rely on some cpu power, ram etc to record or do they have all hardware necessary to write directly to the hardrive?

Yes the received the TransportStream from the card needs to make it into ram across the pci bus (or usb hub) be decoded, the relevant audio and video streams extracted before being written out to the hdd. So you will need the system to be responsive enough to keep processing the streams the entire time you are recording. If the game is very demanding or fails to relinquish the cpu / ram fast enough then the recording may fail or have glitches in it... Windows is not a realtime OS.

[Craig Alexander]

I am thinking of buying a digital HD tuner and am wondering if it would be possible to play a game from one hard drive and record to another drive that I will buy, without effecting game performance or the recording at all, or at least very little difference in game performance and no effect to recording.

If it is possible would recording 2 programs at once with a twin tuner still be possible? Are there cards that do all the processing and don't rely on cpu, graphics card, or ram etc at all for recording without watching that would alow this or are they all like that anyway?

My PC:

ABIT NF7-S Motherboard

AMD XP2500+

512M Ram

Gecube ATI 9600XT Extreme

Any recommendations on cards would be great also, there are so many to choose from. And I don't have PCI-express so thats out.

Thanks in advance.

P.s. I did search but found conflicting info.

Another option is to use a program call FRAPS which has the ability to record gameplay.

I have not used it myself but it is well known in gaming.

See http://www.fraps.com/

Cheers

Craig

[Mcrackn]

Another option is to use a program call FRAPS which has the ability to record gameplay.

I fail to comprehend how this is supposed to answer any of the OP's questions.

[Craig Alexander]

I fail to comprehend how this is supposed to answer any of the OP's questions.

Just realised that I mis-read the original post.

I thought that he wanted to record the game while he was playing it, rather than record an external source while playing a game.

Regards

Craig

[bones_1284]

Yes the received the TransportStream from the card needs to make it into ram across the pci bus (or usb hub) be decoded, the relevant audio and video streams extracted before being written out to the hdd. So you will need the system to be responsive enough to keep processing the streams the entire time you are recording. If the game is very demanding or fails to relinquish the cpu / ram fast enough then the recording may fail or have glitches in it... Windows is not a realtime OS.

I thought the video was received as mpeg-2 and saved as mpeg-2 so no decoding or encoding would be required?

What do you mean by windows is not a realtime OS?

Thanks.

And thanks everyone for their feedback.

[joeybloggs]

What is transmitted and received is a TransportStream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_stream which may contain any number of audio, video, teletext, data etc streams (some of which may be mpeg2 encoded video). So in general you need to decode the TS to split out the streams you are actually interested it. Most apps will then just remux the selected video and audio streams as received without encoding. However it's possible with some apps to decode the video and re encode it as DVD compliant MPEG2 video (basically different packet sizes 2k vs 188 bytes)

[murrayt]

bones 1284

Windows in all it's forms is a multi tasking environment. There are such things as real tme operating systems where time critical events are "guaranteed" (within limits) to occur when needed or demanded.

So given that the broadcaster does not pause its transmission untill you (or anyone else for that matter) are ready to receive it, by necessity your application needs to be ready to receive it when it is there. Put simply if Windows is busy at any one instant, your application is not there to do the biz.

That said, a lightly loaded Windows, with plenty of spare processing headroom can get by and be there when you want it, but if some other application or process decides to run then Windows may (reasonably in the circumstances) - drop the ball!

RTOS assuming appropriately designed would not suffer that problem. Hope that helps.

[Alfred Smee]

My HTPC is similar in spec but it wouldn't run a game like "Half Life 2" whilst recording. The HTPC has a 320Gb hard disk purely for video and can record two video streams (HDTV & Hauppauge-Foxtel) simultaneously without a problem, but gaming often requires all of the system's resources to run fluidly.

[bones_1284]

Thanks Guys.

Alfred,

When your trying to play a game like half-life 2, while recording, does the recording suffer as well or is just the game?

If its just the game I could maybe live with it. If the recording does suffer, then I wonder if setting the process priority to High or Realtime would help.

[bones_1284]

Also can you get tuners with built-in hardware decoders?

If so would that mean there would be virtually no load on the system and you could play games without the recording or game being effected?

[Rob_D]

For digital DVB you do not need a hardware encoder as the signal is already broadcast as essentially a mpeg stream and all your pc does is to copy it to your hard disc. As you said this uses very little of your cpu time.

Rob

[AndrewWilliams]

Also can you get tuners with built-in hardware decoders?

If so would that mean there would be virtually no load on the system and you could play games without the recording or game being effected?

That's only an issue if you're recording analogue. Analogue needs to be captured and compressed which requires a lot of processing. Digital only requires saving an 8Mbit/s stream to the HDD. Given that most modern HDDs can write at about 300-400Mbits/s it's not exactly a strain.

[Alfred Smee]

Thanks Guys.

Alfred,

When your trying to play a game like half-life 2, while recording, does the recording suffer as well or is just the game?

If its just the game I could maybe live with it. If the recording does suffer, then I wonder if setting the process priority to High or Realtime would help.

To be honest I've never even thought of actually trying this as playing HL2 is only just acceptable when it has the PC to itself. But I gave it a go and the game stuttered badly whilst recording with the DVB-T card. However, the DVB video stream was OK.

I tried again whilst capturing analogue off Foxtel with the Hauppauge PVR card and the game ran as if the card wasn't there. Plus, the captured video was perfect. That really impressed me. Obviously hardware encoding MPEG places zero stress on the PC.

[bones_1284]

Ok, Thanks again everyone.

I think I will get a tuner for my pc rather than a seperate pvr. I don't play games that often so if I'm recording I might just have to wait.

Web browsing and basic computer tasks while recording shouldn't effect the recording at all though should it?

[digger12]

Just to add my comments:

My pc is a few years old now

AMD Xp 2400 2.0 Ghz

1 gb ram

ATI 9550 256mb

Winfast DTV1000T

I find that even doing light web surfing and other programs causes some glitches in the tv if it is running in the background.

Mostly sound. (damn annoying) I dont know how this effects the recording?

I personally am too worried to do much on the pc while something I really want to see is recording...

[bones_1284]

Just to add my comments:

My pc is a few years old now

AMD Xp 2400 2.0 Ghz

1 gb ram

ATI 9550 256mb

Winfast DTV1000T

I find that even doing light web surfing and other programs causes some glitches in the tv if it is running in the background.

Mostly sound. (damn annoying) I dont know how this effects the recording?

I personally am too worried to do much on the pc while something I really want to see is recording...

Hmmm... Damn.

Are you using the same hard drive for tv as web surfing etc? Perhaps the hard drive usage is the problem?

If so, it hopefully won't be an issue on my pc as I will be buying as second hard drive just for tv.

Hang on your not talking about recording so does that mean the hard drive is not used for tv when not recording?

[sold]

My computer is used for everything (HTPC, games, internet, work, etc.) and I haven't really noticed any problems when recording. I have two drives, a 320GB WD SATA which has windows and the other programs on it and a 200GB Seagate IDE that I record on.

That said I haven't been particularly looking out for any errors, but if I have time I'll see if I can do a quick test of it tomorrow.

[digger12]

Just on the 2 hard drives, It doesn't really matter too much. I do have 2 and use one for recording and the other for normal

Pc stuff but keep in mind that recording Tv on a hard drive only puts a small dent in its capacity. They have seek read/write

speeds far far above what recording tv impacts on them. (Sorry cant quote any figures here maybe someone else can)

In other words the HDD wont be the bottleneck. If anything it will be Ram or processor.

[byron1503559589]

As an update to this topic...

I'm looking at building a system that will be NAS, Torrents, HTPC and PVR all in one. Basically I don't want multiple devices all over the place and all eggs in one basket suits me. I backup everything that's important to offline HDDs and also to my wifes PC.

As the original poster asked, I do intend to play the occassional game and there maybe recordings occuring at the same time. The game in questions is Neverwinter nights 2, which is a resource hog so It may kill the machine but I'm not sure yet.

The plan is to get Intel Q6600, 3GB RAM and quad tuners in Antec Sonata III (though 'm not sure it's got enough drive bays). Motherboard is undecided right now. The HDTV will be recorded to a seperate disk to the NAS and other disks. I've currently got 900Gb across 5 disks (120GB -Boot, 200Gbx2, 250Gb, 320GB), of which one is the boot disk which will be replace by either a RAM drive or one of the fast WD's. The other 4 drives slots will probably be 4x500GB SATA II's (for NAS and HDTV). I'll probably need an extra SATA controller (i have 2 x PCI SATA controllers which I suspect won't fit in a modern motherboard. 3 of the original 4 drives are mainly idle (photos and MP3s) so they'll be spun down a lot reduce heat. I've not decided on whether or not to RAID 0 the the NAS and HDTV drives. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle.

I'm not sure which graphics card yet, as I hear that the ATI's are better at reducing HD playback loadings? But if I transcode to the 360 (or playback via the 360 (see below) this irrelevant I guess? Currently waiting to see what the new 8800GTS will be like before deciding.

I'm thinking the Quad CPU will be goodness with all the things the box will be doing. I'd like to get one of the faster quads but the cost is too high right now. But given this won't be bought until Dec/Jan things should drop in price a bit.

In peoples experience is possible to record 4 and play 1 back or are you limited to 3 recording and 1 playing? Can you even record 4 at once. That said playback will most likely be via MCE to XBOX 360 so that will reduce the load on playback. I still have to work out if you can schedule recordings from the MCE interface on the 360?

Comments and advice really welcome.

Thanks

Byron

Edited October 29, 2007 by byron