Specifications

DTC-325

Affordable Tools for Digital-TV Professionals March 2015

1. Introduction

The DTC-325 DtGrabber+ is a cost-effective software package designed for Advanced Recording of

MPEG-2 Transport Streams or SDI video signals. The DtGrabber+ is intended to be installed by the

user on any qualifying PC and work in conjunction with DekTec input devices.

The GUI of the DtGrabber+ displays information about the incoming signal, the recording process

and the available disk space in regards with your settings and provides all the necessary controls for

the fine tuning of your recording. Chapter 5 gives an overview of the GUI and details how to

configure your DtGrabber+ for your specific needs.

The application has integrated functionalities for scheduled captures and continuous (24H/365D)

recordings. The user can set-up continuous recording as loop recording on a single file or as

multiple files, depending on user needs and disk capacity. Recorded files can be set by size or

duration or simply Start/Stop manually controlled.

For multiple files, the auto-erase function permits to limit the maximum number of files or to delete

files older than a specified number of hours. It is also possible to launch a sequential recording for a

specific number of files. No packet loss occurs between consecutively recorded files. A merge tool is

provided to recombine multiple sequential files and recreate the original signal. When multiple files,

file names are indexed and time stamped.

One can launch manually a recording on the spot or schedule it following a user-defined Schedule.

The section 5.5.2 details the use of schedules.

Several additional functionalities are provided. The PID filtering permits to define list and ranges of

PIDs to replace selected packet by Null Packets. A log file created in the record directory keep trace

of all actions by the application. The buffer is monitored and past buffer overflow are reported in the

GUI, with the possibility to clear the past alarms. Real-time monitors are displayed regarding

application recording run time, actual file size and the actual file duration, the disk used space and

then disk remaining space.

The DtGrabber+ is the ideal application for scheduled captures, broadcast signals continuous

storage, or simply for your testing and troubleshooting environment. DtGrabber+ can also be used

for building re-play system at your HFC network local nodes. Several instances of DtGrabber+ can

run on the same host system to build cost effective multiple TS recording, for example in

combination with DekTec’s DTA-124 (4x ASI Input PCI card).

DtGrabber+ supports all DekTec input adapters and provides an adapted GUI for specific inputs

like DTU-234 and DTA-160.