[mythtv-users] How to transcode to SD within mythtv - system too slow to play HD

[A. F. Cano]

Hi,

I installed myth 0.26.1+fixes20 from deb-multimedia (deb packages for
Debian Wheezy).  Combined FE/BE.  I've recorded a few shows, but they
are in HD and the computer is too slow to play HD, even though the
display is 1920x1200.  I have selected the options transcode recorded
shows and the low quality option, but still the recorded files are
HD-size (5.2G to 6.8G for 1-hour shows) and when I play them (in a
1920x1080 window) they look fabulously sharp for a second or two and
then the cpu can't keep up.

What am I missing/misunderstanding?  I would like myth to convert the
HD shows to SD after recording them, as happens with commflag.
Of course I'd rather not lose the commercial detection.  Does this
mean that the transcoding would have to come first and then the
commflag applied to the SD file? I'm not too sure how myth does all
this internally.  If it's not possible to have myth go back to recorded
shows and do this, how could I transcode them externally, say with
ffmpeg? so I could watch them with mplayer.  Or would it be possible
to do an external transcode and then replace the files so that myth
would use the new ones instead? Can myth then be told to run the commflag
again?

Thanks for any help/hints that might come my way.  And of course,
now that I got it working, mythtv is an amazing piece of software.
Here's a virtual toast to the developers.

Augustine