[mythtv-users] OT: Editing a MythTV File and Creating a DVD
Brad DerManouelian
myth at dermanouelian.com
Fri Sep 15 23:17:59 UTC 2006
On Sep 15, 2006, at 4:00 PM, Douglas Wagner wrote:
> Ok, I must display my complete NOOBness on this topic.
>
> I'm a tech head and a computer geek. Ask me to setup a new system
> and i'm good to go, ask me to install, maintain and configure
> MythTV, connect the wireing and all the rest, and I can do it
> blindfolded.
>
> Get me inside a video file with the various codecs, programs,
> transcoding and all this jazz and I am HOPELESSLY and I mean wow
> hopelessly lost.
>
> So I have 250g of recorded video on my PVR at this point, mostly
> kids shows. I'd LOVE to take some of the older episodes off the
> PVR and get them on DVD that would be playable on any standard/
> general DVD player...an added bonus would be getting rid of the
> commercials, entry music, exit credits, etc. So in general, the
> kids shows come in at about 600 meg / 30 minute show (Digital,
> don't know if this is HD, i'm guessing it's still SD programming
> due to it's size) So I can fit about 6 - 8 of these (at the
> standard size without any codec conversions) on one DVD.
>
> I'd like to be able to take the files, do whatever it is I need to
> do to them, cut off some of the fronts and backs of the shows,
> string them together and print the whole thing out to DVD for play
> on a standard DVD player.
>
> I don't know how much i'm asking here, but I can tell you that
> everything I run into makes this simple task seem impossible.
> Before I start asking questions, I guess I should ask: Is there an
> idiots howto out there walking simpletons like myself through this
> stuff? I'm at the point where I simply don't know what I don't know.
>
> Ok, questions i've come up with that might or might not apply...
>
> First, I'm looking for some SIMPLE software to edit video files.
> I'm not looking for anything spectacular, I don't really need to
> author my own movies from clips or whatnot, I simply need to take
> the .mpg files that my MythTV installation is producing, string
> them together, cut off the extra opening and closing segments from
> a few of the files and get them "together" in some way. The
> problem I find is that pretty much everything I have tried to use
> (and again, I don't even know where to start looking) is so
> impossible to figure out or so impossible to use that it makes this
> entire thing impossible or painful at least. The second
> requirement however has got to be cheap. I'd really prefer not to
> spend 400$ on a software package that would allow me to re-produce
> Star Wars in full HD video/audio from pictures of comic books, when
> all I need to do is 2 minute edits to a few files and get them out
> to DVD. Translating between codecs would be nice but again, if it
> "simply works" that's ok for me too. I have run across Virtual
> Dub, but it won't seem to open/manage any of the .mpg files from
> MythTV that I throw at it.
>
> Secondly, codecs. Here again i'm lost. I'm somewhat sure that the
> MythTV files are in some sort of Mpeg format as they are recorded
> for me (i.e. the output is in, I believe, Mpeg 2 format). What I
> don't understand is what the native "dvd" format is...is it mpeg?
> Does it matter? Is codec only about size? Again, i'm somewhat
> lost here.
>
> Next: I've run across a post talking about getting MythTV to
> automatically transcode, strip commersials, etc and can follow that
> fairly well to get some transcoding setup, but is it necessary? If
> I do end up transcoding to MPEG-4 (40% decrease in file size from
> what I understand) would that still be playable on a reguilar DVD
> player? Or through MythTV's "Watch Recordings" menu? (I assume I
> could transcode and move to my stored videos directory to play
> through the watch video section, but then i'd loose things like
> playlists and such) I assume something like DIVX would require a
> DIVX capable player and it would play the files as DIVX files (akin
> to playing various video clips on a computer) and not one cohesive
> movie/show? Also, if I did do some transcoding on the files, and
> change the whole set to say Mpeg-4, could I do that "in place" in
> such a way that I would still have access to all the files through
> MythTV?
>
> I'm going to quit here, as you all can probably tell, i'm simply
> lost..and at this point probably babbling. Any assistance anyone
> can provide me would be most appreciated (particularly in the what
> software package department). BTW, Linux, Windows, etc. doesn't
> bother me...i'm happy to work with apps in any of the environments
> (my burn application - Nero - Is Windows and would be my
> prefference for how to get the final mastered "video" onto the DVD
> but if needed I can be flexable on that too.)
>
> --Douglas Wagner
You'll want to use the new plugin MythArchive for MythTV .20. MythTV
has allowed simple editing of video files for a long time now. Choose
Edit Recording then mark your cut points (load your commercial marks
as cutpoints to help as a starting guide). Then choose MythArchive.
The wizard walks you through burning a nice DVD (complete with menus,
chapter marks, etc) of the programs you choose. It will transcode
your files into a suitable format for a NTSC or PAL DVD. You even get
to choose the compression profile depending on how much you need to
fit on the DVD. I was able to do all of this without reading the
manual once. :) Of course I did look through the wiki after I burned
my first DVD to see if I was missing something, but nope. I had it
all down.
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