[mythtv-users] MythTV and Archos AV700 FYI

[zoiks2004-ivtv at yahoo.com]

I've been getting good results watching my
myth(0.19-fixes)-recorded videos on my Archos AV700
using the following command:

mencoder <recording file in store directory> -oac copy
-ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=500 -vf scale=360:240:1
-o <new .avi result file>

This seems to work on those files that are still in
the mpeg2 format output from my Hauppauge card, as
well as those that have been converted to mpeg4 via
myth.

Some people may have been getting good results with
nuvexport, but currently my nuvexport, ffmpeg, and
even mencoder are hosed on my main myth box.  This is
probably a result of my using SuSE 9.2 for my myth OS,
and trying to compile most things from scratch. 
Somewhere, some files seem to have become out-of-date,
and I recall not being able to properly compile
mplayer in SuSE due to some weirdness (like gtk-config
or something - I don't recall).

In any event, I now copy them from the mythbox over
the network to my laptop (running Ubuntu Dapper), and
mencoder (from multiverse repos) works great
out-of-the-box encoding into an xvid format suitable
for the Archos AV700.

Another note: The AV700 seems to want to play mpeg4
encoded video.  That's fine, but whenever I do a
simple re-mux into an AVI container file (via -oac
copy -ovc copy), of a myth file that is already mpeg4,
I get several seconds of video and audio on my AV700,
without the ability to FFWD or RWND, and then the
Archos box crashes.  It's possible the resolution and
bitrate of the mythtv-encoded mpeg4 files are too much
for the Archos unit to handle.  Hence the scaling-down
and reduced bitrates of the mencoder command above. 
With these parameters, I'm getting about 220 MB/hr of
recorded video for the Archos.