[mythtv-users] Poor quality/performance on mytharchive compared to DVDstyler

John Drescher drescherjm at gmail.com
Wed Mar 21 18:45:00 UTC 2007


On 3/21/07, Andrew Roazen <Andrew.Roazen at nau.edu> wrote:
> First, the specs: 450MHz PIII Dell Dimension, 512Mb RAM, unknown DVD burner,
> Hauppauge 150 defaulting to 480x480 recordings, Ubuntu Edgy.
>
> When I was making DVDs from the Recordings folder using DVDstyler, the usual
> turnaround was an hour between (manually) creating the DVD in Ds and letting
> it make the disc. Remember, 450MHz PIII here, not a 2.0GHz core duo.
>
> I used Mytharchive last night and it took nearly seven hours to create a DVD.
> This was the result:
>
> 1. The menus reflected the show's name, not the episode title. When you're
> archiving multiple episodes of a TV show, this is useless.
>
> 2. The selection box indicating *highlight* starts above the first menu item,
> not around it, and doesn't match until the final item. I can't remember
> whether msttcorefonts are installed on this box or not, but that's an
> egregious scaling issue.
>
> 3. The playback was unbelievably flickery. 7 hours of transcoding 480x480s to
> 720x480 to achieve this seems like an incredible waste of time.
>
> 4. If a job fails, the only way to start over is to go to a file window and
> delete the temp folder. "Cancel" is unreliable, and even if you reboot the
> system Mytharchive will see the temp folder and refuse to start over.
>
> My questions:
>
> 1. If DVDstyler can quickly transcode 480x480 MPEG2s to DVD images which play
> back as clean as the original recordings, using the same command-line binaries
> as Mytharchive, what in the blue blazes is Ma doing differently and why?
>
> 2. Where are the configurations for Mytharchive so that I can tweak it closer
> to DVDstyler's optimized settings?
>
> Mytharchive has a very pretty interface. Its output isn't quite as impressive,
> however, unless there's something I've been missing here. Please tell me
> what's going on.
>
>
You need to record at 720x480 by default then there is no reencoding step.

Start the frontend click Utilities/setup. Then Setup. Then TV
Settings. Then  recording profiles. Then Select MPEG2 Encoders
(PVR250, PVR350), Then select Default. Then go to next than you should
see a screen that allows you to set the resolution. Make it 720X480.
If you record using a different profile (than default) you may want to
change that too.

John


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