For an academic project, I’m bulk recording TV news broadcasts from a channel that transmits in 1080i and every so often I need to edit down the recordings to particular segments of relevance but there’s a frequent problem where in every video editor that I’ve tried, (Avidemux, MPEG Streamclip and F.C.P.) the recordings either don’t play properly (often because of video corruption) or simply crash the software. I’ve tried VideoRedo and other programs but with mixed results. Some files I can fix but not all.
However I’m always able to review the recordings on my PVR and watch them on my TV without any problems, so that’s got me thinking that surely I could just connect my PVR’s HDMI out to an HD capture box and let it capture the content in a lossless format that would be free of the problems and also easier to edit than AVCHD.
How viable is this idea and if so, what you would recommend as an external capture box for this purpose?