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

[Steve Boyer]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> 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.

Just something to point out: 8 GB recordings of OTA HD recordings
regularly compress down to less than 1 GB. The 2x-3x file size
reduction that you claim is far from the 8x reduction I normally see.

With that said, if you are watching soon after airing on a combined
frontend/backend or another frontend over gigabit network (or
wireless-n network), the original recording is the easiest/fastest
course of action and just delete as needed or let autoexpire do it's
stuff. My BE has a 1 TB drive and I do keep all of the originals that
are transcoded and have a couple of Christmas classics set to not
autoexpire. If I want to go back and convert to a different format
down the road, I can and have the best source I can get as a starting
point.

>>>   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.
>
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