[mythtv-users] Direct software mpeg-1 encoding(live)

Dhiraj Gaurh dhiraj at vishnubhugwaan.org
Tue Jan 27 09:55:47 EST 2004


Hello friends,
  Some time ago I had written a mail to this list saying that it would 
be very nice if we could encode in mpeg-1 (or 2 if you please) directly, 
rather than encoding in mpeg-4 and later transcoding it to mpeg-1. Many 
people on this list said that it is not possible to do mpeg-1 encoding 
in software as it consumes too much CPU. It sounded rather strange to me 
that it was possible to do live mpeg-4 encoding but not mpeg-1. I 
thought since mpeg-4 compresses more so it should require a faster CPU. 
It turns out that I was right. I was just looking at the freevo 
page(another free Linux PVR application). It says it is possible to do 
direct mpeg-1 VCD quality encoding using a Celeron 400 MHz but mpeg-2 
and mpeg-4 require more CPU power. This seems to be a true statement.
It is possible to directly make a VCD file with Freevo, zapping or the 
standalone mp1e library.So now, if you can't do live mpeg-4 encoding and 
you don't have enough disk space to store your recorded RTJPEG or if you 
want to make a VCD anyway and don't want to bother about transcoding 
from RTJPEG/mpeg-4 to mpeg-1, you can do it !! That's really nice. It 
will be quite nice if we include direct mpeg-1/2 encoding support into 
mythtv. That would be a very nice and useful addition. Let me see what I 
can do about it. If I get some time. It will take a few months if I have 
to do it myself though. The actual work itself shouldn't take a lot of 
time though. The encoder is already there, you just need to put a hook 
into mythtv to make use of it. Seems rather simple to me. Perhaps there 
are reasons why mythtv would not want to use mp1e or rte but I am not 
aware of them. As far as I know, they are open source.

thanks
Dhiraj



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