[mythtv-users] Playing back transcoded files (transcoded to Mpeg-4)

ffrr ffrr at tpg.com.au
Wed Apr 5 07:39:24 UTC 2006


My mythtv install is Knoppmyth R5B7, so that's 0.19 with fixes. My TV 
card is DVB-T so recordings are Mpeg2-TS.

Last night I thought I'd experiment with transcoding to mpeg4 so I could 
fit more shows on my 250GB disk. I set up the profile for autodetect 
from MEG2, and all I did was to change the main setting from rtjpeg to 
mpeg4.  I left everything at the default setttings.  Then I selected a 
one hour show, using the front end, and told it to transcode.

The result - a one hour show (with extra before/after) went from 3.5GB 
to 1.6GB.  That's good.  Now I am trying to play back the file 
remotely.  I normally do this using NFS mapped drives, and the 'pretty' 
symlinks to launch gxine to play them - although Kaffeine and others 
work as well.

Now, all I get is distorted scratchy sounds and no picture.  I went to 
the actual file to try it directly, and discovered it was now an .nuv 
file (started out as an mpg file).  Shouldn't MPEG4 files use mp4 or mpg 
extensions?  Anyway, it still wouldn't play in gxine, so I tried playing 
it with VLC.  This works (although it was stretched tall until I 
manually switched VLC to 16:9 - but that may be a quirk of VLC itself)

So, what do I need to be able to play these files in gxine?  I thought I 
had all the usual codecs (installed from a pack downloaded from mplayer 
HQ about 6 months ago).  Is myth using some special codec to transcode 
to 'mpeg4'?


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