[mythtv-users] Another Stupid Question

[David Brodbeck]

The GUIGuy wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a number of PAL TV recordings in 1280 X 720 (16:9) resolution. 
> They look quite excellent on the giant TV.
> 
> I would like to get them out of Myth with the resolution preserved. Each 
> file weighs in around 4.6G

I would suggest using mencoder or something similar to transcode them to 
MPEG4.  That's what I do for stuff I want to archive.  Normally I do 
this on the command line, but at the moment I'm playing around with 
Avidemux, which is a pretty nice graphical interface for transcoding.

You'll have to play around a bit to find a quality vs. size tradeoff you 
find acceptable, of course.  Encoding can be time consuming but once 
it's going it doesn't need much attention.  You'll find that older 
codecs like xvid are faster than newer (but better) ones like h264.