[mythtv] Re: Myth .nuv MPEG4 format portability

[Rob Snow]

Pretty timely thread!  I've been going through the same issues with trying use mencoder to 
get something I can send to my father on CD. (He loves being able to go through those 
History channel shows at his leisure and for reference.)  I'd also like to burn stuff to CD for 
friends or family (Blame Mythweb, my wife can record CSI and the rest of her shows from 
anywhere).  The downside is that my family and friends are geeky enough, so I started 
looking into options. 
 
My first stab was the patch and plain mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy.  Unfortunately this 
output isn't playable on the two Windows boxes I have access to. 
 
I've had better luck with -ovc lavc -lavcopts mpeg4, this would play with ffdshow one one 
machine but not the other.  Now these are my personal machines so their codec state isn't 
exactly the same as the rest of the world.  This did play to some extent under DivX Player 
2.0 alpha (from 5.03), however, it wouldn't seek and would lock up from time to time causing 
a 3-5min delay before taskmgr would come up so I could kill it (not viable IMO). 
 
Now I'm going to try the divx4 version to see if I can get something useful. 
 
My real goal is simple: I want to find some way to take my mpeg4.nuv files and make the 
output playable under wmp on Windows (or with another player, if it's easily installable and 
available.) 
 
In short: 
-ovc copy = not playable on my two test machines 
-ovc lavc:mpeg4/msmpeg4/msmpeg4v2 = plays on one, not on another (probable codec 
issue) 
-ovc divx4 = haven't tested yet, but looks depressingly slow from initial test. 
-ovc xvid = looks much faster, but ran into some issue before I started keeping notes...was 
my first attempt before -ovc copy...will retest. 
 
I'd MUCH prefer to do a -ovc copy to avoid transcoding as I've done some visual quality 
tests earlier tonight and and it's VERY noticable (two gmplayers on different desktops and 
flipping between them while in fullscreen)  The transcode does look smoother, but thats 
becuase it's lost a crapload of detail. 
 
I -thought- I had something earlier, but I was mistaken =) 
 
-Rob 
 
PS. Personal vision here:  I can see someday in the future being able to record a show from 
the web and being able to specify that it'll be for export from the machine...record the normal 
way (.nuv) but then automatically put it into something useful for the non-Linux world and 
name it <show name>.avi.  From my view, the first step is finding a way to actually make it 
all happen manually, the the fun can begin :) 
 
 
On Wed, 26 Feb 2003 21:11:50 -0600, Michael Cook wrote 
> I've been working on this too recently, and for me the best thing that's 
> worked is to have mencode turn the file into divx to fix the problem 
> with windows not playing the video, only the audio; even though the 
> video was originally in MPEG4 inside the nuv file. My computer could  
> do the straight copy (as suggested elsewhere on this list) at about  
> 700 fps 
> (hard drive limited, I'm sure); but it can only turn the file into divx 
> at 31 fps (it's rock solid, I don't know why it's not going faster, I 
> think it can, it's a PIII 450). It takes 1 hour to turn a 1 hour file 
> into something my Windows box can read, but oh well. The command I  
> use is below (mplayer must be patched) 
>  
> mencoder -ovc divx4 -oac copy infile.nuv -o outfile.avi 
>  
> Hope that helps. 
>  
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