[mythtv-users] How small can I get my captures?
Ray Olszewski
ray at comarre.com
Sat Jun 14 11:04:06 EDT 2003
At 11:42 AM 6/14/2003 -0500, John P DeVale wrote:
[...]
>Well, I am certain that the files are too big -- beyond that, everything
>is up for grabs. However, I went through all the configurations and
>verified that the settings were what they should be. I made no changes to
>any of the settings, but the profiles list now shows LiveTV, Default,
>Transcode where previously it showed LiveTV, Movies, Transcode. But
>everything is set identically, except LiveTV is set to 320x480 whereas
>everything else is set to 480x480. Suddenly, the files that are generated
>are the size I would expect (~1gb/hour). The codec settings were all
>2200, scale bitrate, quality max2, min 15, audio mp3 q7. It doesn't seem
>logical or likely to think it is a causal relationship, but the only
>difference between the setup is the things listed in the recording
>profiles list. It is possible that the values were somehow corrupt and
>just going through them somehow reset things to right. I don't know.
Well ... if you previously did not have a default profile, I don't know how
Myth would have decided to do time captures. No doubt Isaac does, and maybe
he will comment. But I'd think that this was the source of your problem.
>On a separate note, what did you do to clean up your signal? Most of my
>channels are fairly clean, but a few a re atrocious. I have complained to
>Time-Warner, but their primary response is to try and sell me digital
>cable rather than fixing their analog signal...
The answer to this is in two parts.
The first part is the "I was a doofus" part. I had been splitting my cable
signal to the point where some of the nodes were getting too little signal
for good viewing and capture. I simply reduced the number of splits in the
cable line, to the point where 1/8 of the incoming signal was the lowest
any location received. I'm working on getting the capture PC even better
(to 1/4), but even 1/8 improves things a lot. A couple of the broadcast
channels remain, as you say, atrocious, but that's not the cable (I don't
think).
The second part is that I got digital cable for one location. This does not
help with the standard channels -- they still come in at analog quality
(way to go, Comcast!) -- but both visually and in capture, the superiority
of digital is apparent. Fortunately for me, Comcast is, at the moment,
running an extraordinarily good deal on digital ($6/month for first
location, $3/month for each additional location, for about 30 digital
channels, of which maybe 8-10 are of interest), which makes it at least
marginally affordable for me.
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