[mythtv-users] Suggested Encoding Rates

[Timothy Daniel Hamer]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Scott Alfter wrote:

> Neil Bird wrote:
>>   I was just about to post this and a related question.  I'm running my
>> PVR-350 with fairly high (normally) res. PAL settings, and a bitrate of
>> ~6200 somethings.  I get images of ~2.0-2.2 Gb per hour.
>>
>>   Now, I just downloaded [bittorrent] an episode of something I missed.
>>  The AVI's ~364 Mb for the, I guess, ~43 mins., but is, whem played
>> through MythVideo, of comparable quality to the stuff I record at 6x the
>> size!
>
> Those AVIs you downloaded probably aren't using MPEG-2, but instead use some
> variant or another of MPEG-4.  That's why they can deliver the same quality in
> less space.  Comparing MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 is like comparing Ogg Vorbis to MP3.
>
> You could transcode from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 (MythTV will even do this for you),
> but the transcoded recordings won't be playable through your PVR-350.  (That
> assumes you're using its MPEG-2 decoder; I stopped using mine when I upgraded
> to an LCD TV and switched from S-video to DVI.)
>
>  _/_
> / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
> (IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
> \_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden            >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?
>

I noticed the same thing with downloaded files vs. files captured from my 
pvr 150, but even when i use mythtranscode to convert them to mpeg-4, i 
can get downloaded AVI files that look much better and are smaller. Should 
i use one of the external transcoding programs instead of mythtranscode?