[mythtv-users] How to down convert?

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 7:28 AM, Rod Smith <mythtv at rodsbooks.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 November 2008 08:41:57 am mlists at dressler.ca wrote:
>> I have a dual-core frontend/backend with the hd-pvr working great.  No
>> problems with watching TV on it.
>>
>> The problem I have is watching TV from other frontends that are less
>> powerful. I have a single core frontend with a basic nvidia card but I
>> can't watch hd- pvr channels without a large quantity of pre-buffer pauses
>> and studdering.
>>
>> Regular mpeg2 video plays fine on these front-ends.  Is there a way to
>> down- convert the video so I can play it as live tv?
>
> You can transcode the HD content to a lower resolution. This has the obvious
> drawback that you'll lose the HD-ness of the original. If you want to have
> both, AFAIK the only solution is to go outside of MythTV to transcode the
> recording to a lower resolution in the videos directory while keeping the
> original. There are various ways to do this, mostly involving ffmpeg or
> mencoder. You may be able to use one of the "user job" post-processing
> options to run a script to do this from the MythTV interface, but I've never
> looked into this option in any detail.

or transcode to mpeg2 at the same resolution,  which may be better
handled by the other frontend (particularly if it does xvmc)