<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Damian <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:myth@surr.co.uk">myth@surr.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote"> Hello all,<br><br>Can someone tell me if there's a way to export TV recordings to MPG (or any other standard format) without re-compressing? I have several recordings that I'd like to take off of my system and archive away. I don't want to re-compress them to do this though. I'd like to keep the quality as high as possible.<br>
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<div>What you are looking for is "lossless" transcoding. It is possible only if you are not changing the video compression algorithm used. IOW, if you want to change container formats. So the nuppelvideo (.nuv) files could be transcoded to an MPEG2 MKV, MPV, AVI, etc. losslessly so long as the NUV contains MPEG2 data. Lossless transcoding is typically very fast.</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">If I can also use cut points to get rid of commercials and footage before and after the programs begin, that would be great. But my guess is that I can't do that without re-compressing.<br>
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<div><br>You can perform lossless transcoding with cutlists to remove unwanted content but not recompress the video.</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">Can I export the files to MPG?<br><br></blockquote>
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<div>.mpg is a container format (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats</a>), much like nuppelvideo, AVI, and many others. If the actual video stream is in encoded in a .mgp compatible video codec, then it is possible to do a lossless transcode and just change the container format as described above. </div>
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<div>Most capture cards produce one of only 2 or 3 formats these days. In the us, mpeg2 is the OTA broadcast format, while in the UK they use h.264 (MPEG4 AVC). So I would wager that your video is already in a "standard format", it is just in a not so commonly used container format.</div>
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<div>Read up on transcoding with mythtv, paying particular attention to doing lossless transcodes with cutlists. There are several ways to do it, including automatically as a post-recording job.</div></div>