[mythtv-users] Encoding to h264 to save space

[Richard Freeman]

Taco Mel wrote:
> Yes this is probably a keyframe issue.  If you hit the
> video between the keyframes you will see distortion
> until you hit the next keyframe, and then it will
> clear up.
> 

I didn't see this posted yet, so I'll point it out.  Unless something 
has changed mythtv's internal player does not support non-uniform 
keyframes.  If there isn't a keyframe exactly every 15/18 frames or so 
(with a constant interval) the seektable doesn't work.

The problem is that instead of storing frame numbers the seektable 
stores the keyframe number and the player just multiples it by 15/18 to 
get the frame number.

It seems like 80% of my transcoding frustrations are the result of the 
internal player.  I really appreciate the great system that mythtv is, 
but I'm not quite sure why they decided to write their own 
players/transcoders/etc instead of using mplayer/xine-lib/whatever. 
Video that plays just fine in mplayer/xine doesn't work at all in 
mythtv.  So I just use mythvideo if I have to play it and lose the 
ability to bookmark, commercial-skip, etc.

I've been trying for over a year now to transcode HD video to SD while 
keeping the AC3 soundtrack in place.  I've yet to find a set of settings 
that works reliably with seeking.  Just about anything I try works fine 
in mplayer though.  I don't have a frontend capable of playing HD but I 
am interested in capturing it anyway just so that I can get the AC3 
surround tracks...

Oh well...  Maybe somebody will fix it eventually.  I can't complain too 
much - I don't have the time to write a whole new player for myth, and 
it is worth a TON more than I paid for it!  :)