[mythtv-users] Question about nuvexport & transcoding in general

[Dennis Lou]

From: Chris Petersen <lists at forevermore.net>
>> I've got a followup question.  How do mythmkmovie
>and nuvexport compare? 
>
>That said, I don't know about the status of
>mythmkmovie, or whether or
>not it takes advantage of the new mythtranscode...

It still depends on patched mplayer/mencoder as of
v1.01 (which is what's posted on www.icelus.org )
and does not use mythtranscode's fifowriter.

For those just tuning in, the mplayer/mencoder
patch is quite old and both mplayer and MythTV's
modified-NUV format have both changed since then.

To answer Robert's question more thoroughly,
mythmkmovie can only write AVI (DivX).  nuvexport
can write AVI (DivX), WMV, VCD and SVCD.  mythmkmovie
depends on patched mplayer/mencoder and a Perl
curses package while nuvexport depends on ffmpeg
for AVI and WMV and mjpegtools for VCD/SVCD.  The
current iteration of the VCD/SVCD writing component
of nuvexport also depends on today's CVS version of
MythTV and doesn't quite work properly with 0.11.

mythmkmovie provides a flat list of recordings
while nuvexport is somewhat hierarchical: you
select the show first then the episode second.  

The way mythmkmovie processes the cutlist is kind
of funky as well.  It pads the video to make up
for audio sync problems.  Since nuvexport 
essentially uses mythfrontend's NUV decoder, 
it doesn't have to deal with this funkiness.

mythmkmovie stores its transcoding state in
mysql while nuvexport doesn't.  Presumably
this allows for restarting crashed export
sessions.

Hope this answers your question.

BTW, the main impetus for WMV is that you can't
stream AVI via http.  Browsers and Windows Media
Player have to download the file to cache first,
then play it.  However, the WMV that ffmpeg
(and hence, nuvexport) writes uses MP2 for audio.
WMP, in an effort to promote closed systems, will
only play WMV files containing audio encoded using
WMA and will refuse to play audio encoded using
anything else.  Mplayer (patched or unpatched;
Windows, Linux or Mac) will play MP2 encoded WMV
files just fine.

-Dennis

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