[mythtv-users] 4:3cco MPEG2->MPEG2 transcoding

[Rod Smith]

On Friday 07 December 2007 03:36:48 Darren Hart wrote:
> Is it possible to have mythtv automatically crop all my 4:3 content as it
> is being recorded and transcode it into a 16:9 stream?  I use PVRx50 cards
> and my frontend is a media mvp, so the resulting stream must still be
> mpeg2.

AFAIK, MythTV doesn't support this option directly; however, you can call an 
external transcoding script. Both ffmpeg and mencoder support cropping 
videos, so you could write a script that does the job and then call it after 
your show is recorded.

Unfortunately, figuring out all the options can be tricky. If you'd like to 
see a sample, check http://www.rodsbooks.com/mytranscode. This is a script I 
wrote to help me get recordings in shape for burning to DVD. It's unsuitable 
as-is because it requires run-time interaction -- rather than take a bunch of 
command line options, it asks you questions about what you want to do when 
you run the program. (You do have to pass it the input and output filenames 
on the command line, though.) You could probably modify the script by nailing 
down certain options to what you want; or you could wrap this script in 
another one that passes options via stdin redirection. Either way, you'd also 
want to perform some move/rename operations and have MythTV do a lossless 
transcode when you're done, otherwise it'll get confused.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com