[mythtv-users] Is there a good guide on recording profilessomewhere?

[Dave K. Packham]

I always wondered why we cant use XVID/Divx to save older TV shows?  I
have several PC apps and the MythDVD RIP that will RIP a 2 hour movie
into a nice 700 meg, 1.1gig for the MythDVD rip, file that has some
great quality and sound.  Even if it has to transcode two pass etc etc.
My Myth has cycles to spare. How can I change the saved TV shows to do
something like this?  Is there and automagic option to capture in high
bitrate MPEG2 from my PVR-250 and then transcode it in the background
eventually replacing the MPEG2 file?

Thanks
Dave P

-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Jay R. Ashworth
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 11:12 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Is there a good guide on recording
profilessomewhere?

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 01:52:06AM -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 08/29/2004 02:03 PM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >I'll second this.  We're pretty happy with our Default, but less so 
> >with our Low Quality... and some suggestions on good mpeg2->4 
> >transcoding parameters would be nice too.
> >
> >I've put up a couple of pages at MythTV.info that people can post 
> >their parameters and comments on; they're underneath
> >
> >http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/UserManual_2fTechnicalDetailsAppendix
> >
> >It's pretty much a copy and paste kind of thing.
> >
> >All contributions welcome.  :-)
>
> Haven't yet set up an account on the wiki, so I'm posting here.

Note that you can edit the wiki even if you *haven't* registered yet,
though we encourage you to do so.

> I've noticed a lot of people using high bitrates with the PVR-x50's, 
> but I'm using a pretty low bitrate and getting what I consider to be 
> excellent results.  I will admit that I'm coming from about 5 years of

> having only watched TV after recording everything to VHS in EP mode, 
> so I'm not the best judge of quality (anything beats an EP VHS 
> recording :).  Also, I have a satellite signal piped to the PVR-350 
> via S-Video (but I'm using nVidia GF4MX440 for output for OpenGL and 
> Xv support), so signal noise/bad signal quality aren't a problem.

I know what you mean.  

> Anyway, I was wondering what someone with a discriminating eye might 
> think of my settings.  I'm using a bitrate of 2200 and max bitrate of 
> 9800 and it seems to give me the best of both worlds--small files and 
> good quality.  I'm averaging about 1 1/4 GB/hr.  I've heard that 
> having a large range of bitrates tends to stress the encoder, but I 
> got 50 episodes and 174 hours of Olympics without problems.  Also, I'm

> using 640x480, but I can't tell a difference in quality between 
> 480x480, 640x480, and 720x480.  I might be switching to 720x480 to 
> make DVD authoring easier, but...

Wow.  I'll have to plug that in for comparison, but we're averaging
2.2GB/hr, which is clearly high.  It may be the large differential that
makes the card's job easier, we'll have to try that.

> Also, I'm wondering if the poor quality people have mentioned is 
> actually noticeable on the TV or only when transcoding for/playing 
> back on a computer (or other progressive display).

I can spot MPEG artifacting on direct un-transcoded playback, myself.

> BTW, at the bottom is a nice little query that can summarize your 
> recording profile information in a compact cross-tab format.  I'm 
> posting my data in the standard tabular format because the long-lines 
> of the cross-tab don't go well with  text-based mail readers...  (Oh, 
> and you should probably stretch your terminal window when running the 
> query.)

*Very* cool; thanks.  I'm going to toss that into a script.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth
jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink
RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think
'87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727
647 1274

	"You know: I'm a fan of photosynthesis as much as the next guy,
	but if God merely wanted us to smell the flowers, he wouldn't 
	have invented a 3GHz microprocessor and a 3D graphics board."
					-- Luke Girardi