[mythtv-users] How small can I get my captures?

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Sat Jun 14 11:04:06 EDT 2003


At 11:42 AM 6/14/2003 -0500, John P DeVale wrote:
[...]
>Well, I am certain that the files are too big -- beyond that, everything 
>is up for grabs.  However, I went through all the configurations and 
>verified that the settings were what they should be.  I made no changes to 
>any of the settings, but the profiles list now shows LiveTV, Default, 
>Transcode where previously it showed LiveTV, Movies, Transcode.  But 
>everything is set identically, except LiveTV is set to 320x480 whereas 
>everything else is set to 480x480.  Suddenly, the files that are generated 
>are the size I would expect (~1gb/hour).  The codec settings were all 
>2200, scale bitrate, quality max2, min 15, audio mp3 q7.  It doesn't seem 
>logical or likely to think it is a causal relationship, but the only 
>difference between the setup is the things listed in the recording 
>profiles list.  It is possible that the values were somehow corrupt and 
>just going through them somehow reset things to right.  I don't know.

Well ... if you previously did not have a default profile, I don't know how 
Myth would have decided to do time captures. No doubt Isaac does, and maybe 
he will comment. But I'd think that this was the source of your problem.

>On a separate note, what did you do to clean up your signal?  Most of my 
>channels are fairly clean, but a few a re atrocious.  I have complained to 
>Time-Warner, but their primary response is to try and sell me digital 
>cable rather than fixing their analog signal...

The answer to this is in two parts.

The first part is the "I was a doofus" part. I had been splitting my cable 
signal to the point where some of the nodes were getting too little signal 
for good viewing and capture. I simply reduced the number of splits in the 
cable line, to the point where 1/8 of the incoming signal was the lowest 
any location received. I'm working on getting the capture PC even better 
(to 1/4), but even 1/8 improves things a lot. A couple of the broadcast 
channels remain, as you say, atrocious, but that's not the cable (I don't 
think).

The second part is that I got digital cable for one location. This does not 
help with the standard channels -- they still come in at analog quality 
(way to go, Comcast!) -- but both visually and in capture, the superiority 
of digital is apparent. Fortunately for me, Comcast is, at the moment, 
running an extraordinarily good deal on digital ($6/month for first 
location, $3/month for each additional location, for about 30 digital 
channels, of which maybe 8-10 are of interest), which makes it at least 
marginally affordable for me.





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