[mythtv-users] software encoding to MPEG2

[Tom Metro]

Rod Smith wrote:
> AFAIK, this isn't possible in MythTV; you'll have to use mencoder,
> ffmpeg, or some other tool to re-encode the videos to MPEG-2 format.

That's what I figured. Thanks for the confirmation.


> In my experience, RTJpeg is indeed less CPU-intensive than MPEG-4,
> but it also produces worse video artifacts than MPEG-4.

OK, good to know.


> If your CPU is weak, you might consider buying a second-hand hardware
> encoding card rather than a software encoding card. ... I picked up
> an AVerMedia M150-D for something ridiculous, like $5...

I did a search (via Froogle, which covers eBay) for the AVerMedia M150-D 
and only found one going for $120, but thanks for the tip. If I wasn't 
trying to get something in place for the Fall premiers (when most of my 
conflicts occur) I'd just save an eBay search and wait for one to show 
up cheap.

I see you can get PVR-150s for about $50, which is probably the least 
painful solution.

The only reason I was even bothering with a card without hardware 
encoder is because I had it lying around and figured I'd make use of it 
for the few dozen times a year when I encounter a scheduling conflict.

I installed the card yesterday, an Advantech HYY 7130, as pictured here:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=7130-TV&cat=VID&cm_mmc=TechTips-_-JK-_-TVonComputer-_-s87-21Jul06

which is part of the Philips SAA 7134 family, but uses a SAA 7130 tuner 
chip. Unfortunately it's a really cheap one that lacks an EEPROM to hold 
the identification of the card, so the driver doesn't know how to talk 
to it. I followed instructions for manually specifying a card type to 
the driver, but this card isn't one of the listed types, so I just 
picked the first one that mentions a 7130 tuner.

It partially works in that the driver loads mostly without complaint (it 
still complains about the missing EEPROM, but doesn't dump the list of 
card choices), and the sound driver loads, but it shows nothing but snow 
in mplayer and MythTV. It appears there is a tuner parameter to the 
driver also, but I haven't turned up any info on how to set it. I'll be 
posting to the video4linux-list to see if they have any suggestions.


Chris Pinkham wrote:
> ...currently you can only software-encode to MPEG-4
> and RTjpeg.  It is a 2-part issue.  You have the encoding method and
> the container format.  I made some modifications to SVN a while back to
> allow MPEG-2 data in .nuv files, but didn't hook up the GUI parts.

So does that mean that even though I can transcode to MPEG2 external to 
MythTV, things won't work right if I replace the .nuv with a .mpg that 
doesn't use the MythTV container format?

If that's the case, then I'll stop wasting my time with this cheap card 
and get a PVR150...or upgrade to an HDHR.


> I have a working patch, but it needs a bit more glue
> and quite a bit more testing before it is SVN-worthy.

Even if it was in SVN, it wouldn't help me, as I'm running .20-fixes 
from an Ubuntu package.

  -Tom