[mythtv-users] Transcoding Advice

[Gavin Hurlbut]

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Doug Haber <doug at fawnanddoug.com> wrote:

> Does anyone have any suggestions on specific parameters to shrink
> these files down to ~300MB (and still be watchable)?
>
> Thanks!
> Doug
>
> p.s. I also tried nuvexport, but I'm not sure what codecs or settings to
> use
>

I would suggest using nuvexport, as ffmpeg (even as mythffmpeg, which
nuvexport uses now) command line options are a type of black magic almost.

For a half hour show at 300MB...  your total bitrate would be around
1300kbit/s (that would get you 292.5MB for half hour).  You should be able
to find some combination of codec, etc that will give you pretty nice
quality audio/video in that total bitrate, but for sure, you'll want to be
resizing as part of that.

I would suggest (if you have the CPU time for it) using nuvexport, going to
H.264, and using audio of 64kbit-192kbit (whatever sounds good to you in the
end), and a video bitrate of around 1000 or so, and a resolution in the
range of 480 rows... which for simple math, is 848x480.    But play with the
knobs until you get what you like.

If the re-encoding time delay gets to be too much, trying an MP4 transcode
around the same parameter range will likely still be quite watchable.  That
may even be too high of a video bitrate to play with. :)

Right now, I'm in the middle of transcoding 1080i H.264 from my HD-PVR down
to 848x480 H.264 at 720k video / 64k audio to try playing on my nook color.
 We'll see how it all goes.  (a Barenaked Ladies concert, BTW)
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