[mythtv-users] Transcoding for Palm handheld?

[David Cain]

Thanks all for the assistance - lots of great tips!

I now have the machine cranking out my nightly fave public-affairs  
program for the Palm!


I'd like particularly to thank John Whitear who helped with a command- 
line I was able to bend to my will. For my Tungsten T3, I'm now using:

      mencoder -vf scale=320:240 -oac mp3lame -lameopts  
mode=0:cbr:br=96 -af volnorm -srate 32000 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts  
bitrate=200 -o $VIDEODIR/pda/$TITLE-$STARTTIME.avi  $VIDEODIR/$FILENAME

I'm going to have to fool with the video bitrate a little more - I'd  
like smaller files and can take a reduction in picture qualtiy, but  
otherwise it's just fine. I'm getting an hour of (noisy-video,  
analog, 4:3, NTSC) program into 127MB.


I'd also like to thank Scott Alfter <mythtv at salfter.dyndns.org> for  
some other great settings I'm going to experiment with as time permits.


Also thanks to Jeff volckaert for a link to the PDATranscode thread  
with the script and installation instructions:

      http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/231299? 
search_string=pdatranscode;#231299

I've modified this script to add:

      chmod 664 $VIDEODIR/pda/$TITLE-$STARTTIME.avi

after the video is compressed so I can move/delete the file remotely  
when logged in as another user in the mythtv group.


I'm playing videos on the T3 with the free TCPMP player:

      http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about


One issue users need to understand as you experiment with transcoding  
this way: not all versions of mencoder (maybe no versions?) will  
understand previously-transcoded-to-MPEG-4 .nuv files. I discovered  
this after trying to use the mencoder command lines above to  
transcode an .nuv file that had been transcoded to MPEG-4 already (as  
it turns out, the only one on my machine - I'd transcoded it by  
accident while trying to get PDATranscode kicked off the first time).  
I switched to another file (MPEG-2 .nuv file from my PVR-350 tuner  
card) and mencoder worked just fine.

I also noted that mplayer (cousin to mencoder) and ffmpeg on my OS X  
machine wouldn't read the MPEG-4 .nuv file. Don't know if this  
relates to the versions of these tools, or whether it just won't  
work. I'm on an older OS (Ubuntu Hoary) for my current Myth box and  
using an older version of mencoder. YMMV.


Hey Bonus: just found a $15.99 loss-leader deal on 1GB SD cards at  
Microcenter!

Thanks again all for all the help!

DC