[mythtv-users] How to get best quality out of nuvexport?

[Markus Döhla]

Hello everybody!

I'm a myht-user since version 0.14 and I'm archiving my recordings as
xvid's using nuvexport with transcode.
My question is, how do I get best quality at least cost of space out of my
MPG2 recordings (PVR-350).
I tried both, nuvexport with ffmpeg and transcode.
My conclusion is that nuvexport utilizing transcode gives better quality
than using ffmpeg.
With ffmpeg the video smears, if that's the right expression.
Raising the bitrate generates a bigger file, but does not solve the problem.
I'm on gentoo, so I tried different versions of ffmpeg (0.4.8, 0.4.9 in 4
different releases) and nuvexport, but no quality improvement.
With some releases of ffmpeg nuvexport breaks or runs for good without
result.

Another combination of nuvexport with ffmpeg produced an avi with sound
but no picture, but took as long as encoding successfully with both :)
Newer versions of nuvexport break with transcode (cropping doesn't work)
or give terrible results regarding quality.

Another factor is the version of xvid, which can break encoding, too.
I tried all versions available on gentoo (0.9.1, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.1.0).

So I'm using an older version of nuvexport (nuvexport-0.2_pre_20050123) on
gentoo which utilizes transcode only.

I would like the max of quality with no regard to encoding time.
My server takes about 1 hour for 25 minutes of mpeg2 video to transcode to
xvid with the following configuration:


My currently installed versions are:
------------------------------------
- transcode (0.6.14)
- nuvexport (nuvexport-0.2_pre_20050123)
- xvid (1.0.2)


My settings are:
----------------
- xvid
- myth cutlist on
- deinterlacing on
- broadcast cropping on
- audio bitrate: 224
- video bitrate: 1600
- two-pass on
- resolution: 720x576 (PAL)


What are your combinations of versions and encoding settings?


Regards
Markus