[mythtv-users] MythArchive -- why I've given up

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Sat Jun 16 18:17:29 UTC 2007


Alex Halovanic wrote:
>> My suggestion would be for a way to record a show in a format such that it
>> would be
>> ready to dump to a DVD in a fashion that takes much less time.  The show
>> would be
>> stored on the hard drive so that no further transcoding would be necessary,
>> and the
>> show could be dumped to a DVD in minutes.  Something like this appears to
>> already
>> be there (I've seen settings for transcoding after recording in the setups),
>> but every time
>> I've tried MythArchive some further transcoding always seems to be required.
> 
> With the Hauppauge150/25/350/500 cards, (and presumably anything else
> that uses hardware to capture to MPEG-2) you can capture analog
> television to 720x480 MPEG2 format which doesn't require any
> transcoding.  I'm not exaggerating when I say I can have a two hour
> long movie burned to DVD in less than 30 minutes when mytharchive
> doesn't have to transcode it.  I do agree with you that sync issues in
> transcoding are annoying...I haven't been able to get any HD shows
> transcoded to a DVD compliant size without my audio getting out of
> sync.  And unfortunately any real kind of transcoding (not something
> like the compression done by tools like DVDShrink or Tcrequant to
> reduce the size of an already compliant file) will always take a lot
> of time so it's best to avoid it when you can.

It doesn't have to transcode, but it does have to demux and then remux,
something units like the Plextor can eliminate. But, as you say, it's no
big deal except on a really underpowered machine.

But even if the process DID take 4 hours (which it shouldn't), what's
the problem? Start it when you go to bed at night and it's there when
you wake up in the morning.


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