[mythtv-users] Motorola 6200 & Firewire - Transcode?

[Tom Hayward]

On Feb 19, 2012 10:02 AM, "Gerald Brandt" <gbr at majentis.com> wrote:
> With the HD-PVR I used to record 720p.  The MPEG stream coming from the 6200 is (in most cases) 1080i.  I haven't looked at resulting file sizes yet, but what is everyone using to transcode the MPEG stream?

I rarely transcode. Just assume 6GB/hour and get a big hard drive. I
currently have about 1.5 TB allocated to myth and 300-something
recordings. I could survive with much less (auto-expire is your
friend).

If you really want to transcode, start with the transcode wrapper stub
and add it as a user job:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Transcode_wrapper_stub

I use ffmpeg for transcoding. Modifying the stub like this will match my setup:

transcoder = 'ffmpeg'
...
output = task('-y -i "%s" -acodec copy -vf
yadif,scale='-1:720:interl=1'  -vcodec libx264 -vpre slow -crf 20
"%s"' % (infile, outfile))

This will deinterlace and resize to 720p, then encode to h264 with the
x264 library. You can lower the crf number to increase the quality
(and resulting filesize).

If you don't have a fast CPU, don't bother with the above transcode stuff.

Tom