[mythtv-users] Another Stupid Question

[David Brodbeck]

On Fri, February 13, 2009 12:07 am, The GUIGuy wrote:
> David Brodbeck wrote:
>> I would suggest using mencoder or something similar to transcode them to
>> MPEG4.  That's what I do for stuff I want to archive.  Normally I do
>> this on the command line, but at the moment I'm playing around with
>> Avidemux, which is a pretty nice graphical interface for transcoding.
>>
>
> mencoder/ffmpeg etc really aren't giving the quality of the original.

I usually find the default bitrate settings in mencoder inadequate.  I use
a video bitrate of 1800 kbps when transcoding 480x480 analog TV to MPEG4;
I would expect you'd need something significantly higher for your content.
 H264 will do better at the same bitrate, but take much longer to encode. 
(I can do DiVX-style MPEG4 at about 15 fps on the second pass, H264 at 4
fps.)