[mythtv-users] Best settings for transcoding HD content to save space?

[Raymond Wagner]

On 5/13/2014 1:21 PM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 7:50 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
>> On 5/12/2014 6:52 PM, Ben Kamen wrote:
>>> I've been looking at my drive space wondering if I can trim down
>>> per/show usage by good transcoding settings.
>> You're best off just performing lossless cutting and being done with it.
>> Disk space is cheap.  Transcoding takes time.
> It's not really a one size fits all situation, from my point of view.

Unless you need to fit within certain device or network constraints, 
such as use on a mobile device with limited storage or playback support, 
or streaming over the internet, you're best off with the original (or 
the original minus ads).  PC storage is sufficiently cheap and trivial 
to add that cutting your ~4GB MPEG2 recordings down to 1.5-2GB H264 
isn't worth it.

>>   If you absolutely must
>> transcode, you do not want to use the internal transcoder.
> Can you clarify that statement?  What's so bad about the internal
> transcoder?  I've not been using it, but I've been wondering if I
> should.

The internal transcoder (when actually transcoding rather than just 
clipping) is limited to outputting MPEG4 (ASP) or RTJPEG in a NUV. MPEG4 
is only modestly smaller than MPEG2, and RTJPEG is much larger, so both 
fail to satisfy the storage or streaming reasons. You'll be hard pressed 
to find any hardware playback device capable of handling Nuppelvideo, so 
the compatibility reasons are right out.