[mythtv-users] Plextor ConvertX Mpeg-2?

[Jesse Guardiani]

On Saturday 04 February 2006 11:40 pm, Byron Poland wrote:

[...]

> Mythtv only support mpeg-4 from the convertX.  I'm not sure if the
> developers are adding support for the other formats.  I've found if I
> crank the bit rate up pretty hi, mpeg-4 looks okay.


Yeah, I just cranked the video bitrate 6000 from the default 2200, and
the audio from 32,000 samples/sec to 48,000 (anything less gives a tinny
audio quality). I also moved the audio mp3 quality slider down from 7 
to 5 to increase audio compression a bit. An hour of mpeg-4 is now 1.2g
as compared to an hour of mpeg-2 being 2.2g. Not bad. It's still a bit
lower quality than mpeg-2, but it's comparable and usable. I don't think
the Plextor's hardware engine is quite as high quality as the PVR 350
though. I still get artifacts here and there during high motion. But it
could be the driver or the mpeg-4 playback library I suppose. 

MP3 Audio is now being encoded using 128 kbps instead of the default 96 kbps. 
I think increasing the audio bitrate indirectly forced this change as there 
isn't an option for it anywhere. I wish I could bump it up to 384kbps like 
the mpeg-2 audio my PVR 350 generates, but there doesn't seem to be a 
setting for that in the recording profile.

So at this point I want to do 2 things with the Plextor under MythTV that 
I can't currently do:

1.) Record using mpeg-2
2.) Record MP3 audio using 384kbps instead of 96/128kbps.

I might just keep this thing around for a while. It's interesting... :)


-- 
Jesse Guardiani
Programmer/Sys Admin
jesse at wingnet.net