I'm using a Visionsat DVR receiver to make recordings for later viewing. Some of the recordings are really big. It seems like hard drives are usually formatted in FAT32, which has a 4GB size limit.
One HD program I tried to record on the Visionsat is listed as 13GB in size. How can that be?
On TSReader a big recording got up to 4GB in size and then stopped. Does some software or feature automatically create a new file when the size limit is reached? What does this?
Seems like you could use multiple receivers and over lap the start and end times to get all of the content piecewise. But that is messy.
What's the best way to handle making and viewing large recordings?
Would a PC with NTFS file system be better? How about a Linux system?
I've noticed that my VisionSat receiver will create multiple files when recording a show over the 4 gig limit. Take a look at the files on a PC and you will see shows with a .ts extension and a .ts1 (I think) extension for the next one. The Visionsat itself will display it as a single file in the PVR list, but in fact it is more than 1 file.
My Diamond 9000 stores each recording in 3 files. The main data is in .TRP and 2 smaller files of .IDX and .IFO of only a few KBs.
I'm not sure if it has a limit.
As Davage said, most STBs I've used (Coolsat 8100, Diamond 9000, Azbox) will record in multiple files, but play back continuously (although the Azbox initially wasn't quite so smart). My Coolsat records something like 4 GB files, and my Diamond 9000 records something like 2 GB files (I may have that backward). I think the Diamond must do that to be compatable with regular FAT drives, while the Coolsat assumes FAT32. The Diamond won't stop at just 3 files. It keeps going until something like 10 files (apparently it only has room for 1 digit numbers in the file names) (again I may be confusing that with the Coolsat).
Also, TSREADER won't stop at 4 GB unless you're recording to a FAT32 drive. TSREADER has a setting where you can tell it to not exceed 4 GB files, and if you do that, it will break up a bigger recording into multiple 4 GB files, which again, you can later put together into one big file if you want.
Interestingly (to me at least), my TIVO will record files bigger than 4 GB, and I have a program that will extract the recordings to a computer. If I (by accident) transfer them to a FAT or FAT32 disk, the program creates a file that is bigger than the FAT32 maximum size! It REALLY confuses windows though, when you try to copy that file to another drive, but it WILL copy it. And it really confuses programs like VLC that try to play the files, because it will play up to the file limit, then the scroll bar stopps working, but it does continue to play. If you try to move the scrollbar past the limit, VLC bombs. Really neat.
But I've recorded video files up close to 60 GB at times, like a couple SB games at HD. Only problem I had was when using Diamond9000, I had to be careful to avoid going past the 10 file limit.
