[mythtv-users] Encoding to h264 to save space

Richard Freeman r-mythtv at thefreemanclan.net
Fri Feb 22 20:22:20 UTC 2008


Chris Pinkham wrote:
> * On Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 10:22:57PM -0500, Richard Freeman wrote:
>> Video that plays just fine in mplayer/xine doesn't work at all in 
>> mythtv.  So I just use mythvideo if I have to play it and lose the 
>> ability to bookmark, commercial-skip, etc.
> 
> I think you just answered your own question.  With those external apps,
> you'd lose all the features that our internal player supports.
> 

True enough.  Although it would be nice if you could tap into those 
libraries and yet maintain control of the seeking.  If you could just 
get mplayer or xine-lib to skip to frame xyz on demand that would 
probably do the trick.  But you are correct that you do limit yourself 
to some degree in this way - especially with stuff like 
picture-in-picture, OSD, etc.  Maybe the library providers would 
entertain accepting patches to get them to behave the way you want, and 
you could always fork in the worst case.

> 
> I've successfully tested a hack to do just what you're looking for,
> I transcoded from mpeg-ps containing MPEG-2 video and AC3 audio down to
> a .nuv file containing MPEG-4 video and the original AC3 audio.  This was
> a hack test on top of another large modification I'm working on to modify
> the software recorder to support multiple file formats and additional
> codecs.  Don't expect this in SVN anytime soon, but it it something
> that's on my TODO.  I much prefer the original AC3 audio to reencoded MP3
> in the files that I do transcode.
> 

That's GREAT to hear!  A transcoding option to preserve AC3 while 
downsizing the video to H264 (or MPEG2 if you must) would be wonderful!

Again, I don't want to knock the great system that myth is.  Especially 
when the most I've contributed is a little patch to add an icon for 
preserved programs to the program listing...


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