[mythtv-users] Transcoding options

[Tony Gould]

First of all, apologies because I feel like I should know this already and
it should be obvious, but I still don't really understand it after
searching the web and archives.

At the moment, by default, I cut out ads for the stuff I record, and then I
have a number of different transcoding profiles set up. They all go to
MPEG-4 (the RTjpeg option fails for me), and I vary the bitrate between
1000 (cartoons) and 2400 (action movies) to get low, medium and high
quality transcoding jobs available.

First of all, is what I'm doing sensible, or optimal? I hear others talking
about different types of encoding, and I wonder if the built-in options
that I'm using are really the best way. E.g. is it possible to get the same
quality at a lower disk space, or reduce the transcoding time for the same
 quality?

Also, can someone please explain in simple terms why I get an nuv file out
of this and not an mp4 (or avi) file out? It would be really nice just to
be able to export the files directly out of my recordings directory without
having to go through a tool like nuvexport. (Once again, apologies as this
is probably obvious to a lot of people). My vague understanding of file
formats is that things like avi (and nuv?) are just containers for a number
of different formats within the file, so if nuv contains MPEG-4 after
transcoding can't I just play it directly?

Thanks,

Tony.
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