[mythtv-users] All profiles the same as default?

[Bruce Markey]

Dave Bush wrote:
> Hey folks,
>    I'm messing around with MythTV on my desktop system. (WinTV Go card, 
> Athlon 2600+, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB 7200 RPM EIDE drive, Debian SID, MythTV 
> installed via apt-get) It's not what I picture as my final setup when I 
> build a box specifically for MythTV in the future (going to go for a 
> bigger drive and either a PVR-250 or 350) - more just for learning tips 
> & tricks before I spend the $$$$$ for a real box.
> 
>    My question is this - MythTV by default makes some pretty big files. 
> I'd like to lower the quality of the recordings to save on hard drive 

[s/quality/resolution/ =). Quality is more a matter of color
reproduction, black level cutoff, blooming at high luma, signal
quality, broadcast quality, compression and filter artifacts, etc.
The profiles mostly affect resolution. You could get good quality
at low resolution or poor quality at high resolution. Res doesn't
make as much quality difference as other factors. ;-]

> space. I'm assuming I do this through the different recording profiles, 
> and choose Low Quality. My only problem is this - all my profiles are 
> exactly the same. Is this the default and we're supposed to tweak things 
> from there?
> 
>    If so, can someone make a recommendation for a lower quality setting 
> that will still be watchable but not take up so much space? If it helps 
> I tend to go with basic quality on my series 2 Tivo.

Here is what I use:

profile   res  scaled bitrate  max/min  sampling  quality  GB/hr
Default  480x480  MPEG-4 4000    1/8     44100       5     1.33
Live     400x480  MPEG-4 5000    1/6     44100       3     1.5
High     544x480  MPEG-4 5500    1/8     48000       3     2.1
Low      352x480  MPEG-4 2700    2/15    32000       7     0.66