[mythtv-users] .25 mythtranscode copy over in .26 failing after upgrade

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Fri Mar 15 17:33:16 UTC 2013


On 03/15/2013 12:36 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> I don't expect miracles as far as disk space goes, but transcoding
> anything that hasn't been deleted after a few days really cuts down on
> storage requirements, even if in the end it is all destined for
> /dev/null.
>
> The other option is to upgrade my RAID from 1TB to 2TB drives, but
> that seems a bit wasteful (I'd prefer to wait until I could jump to
> something closer to 4-8TB/drive since hard drives don't really have
> any resale value).

Do you really need (or even want?) RAID for DVR recordings?  IMHO, it's 
just TV, so it's not worth the cost of RAID.  You can get a 2TB for $70 
- $100 (such as 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834 for $90 
after promo code) or a 3TB HDD for ~ $110 - $130 (such as 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-136-874 for $120), to 
either double or triple your current storage.  You can also set up your 
system so that "important" recordings use a special Storage Group (i.e. 
RAID) that contains only the directory of your RAID and all others use 
Default, which only has the directories on your non-RAIDed disks.  And 
if you record something to Default and later decide it's actually 
important, you can simply move it to the RAID disk (and don't need to 
change anything in the database--as the specified Storage Group is 
really nothing more than information about where MythTV should write the 
recording file, not where it's found).

IMHO, transcoding isn't worth the time (*your* time) that it consumes.  
Commercial detection is likely to fail on any other-than-normal video 
format (as it's not tested, nor intended for that), so you'd either have 
to hope mythcommflag works and/or make it work by fixing any issues or 
try to remap old cuts to new video.  You'd also have to clear out the 
old seek table and--depending on the new format--possibly want to create 
a new seek table.  And that doesn't even go into the processor time 
(read, expenditure of real money on electricity) involved, either.

Full disclosure: I have 13.75TB of non-RAIDed storage on my MythTV 
system and don't use RAID for any MythTV data.  I have lost some 
recordings over the years, but most weren't important enough to care 
and/or were ones I was sure I'd pick up in reruns, and the money I've 
saved by not spending extra on RAID was more than enough to cover the 
cost of buying an episode or few of my favorite "must see" (and "must 
see in order) shows on Amazon Instant or XBox Live Marketplace or Hulu 
Plus or iTunes or wherever you'd like to buy from.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Mike


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