[mythtv-users] Show archival advice

Sabin Dang lists at sabindang.com
Sat Feb 7 19:55:32 EST 2004




> I am recording all episodes of Seinfeld. I am considering the 
> different ways
> to archive them. I am using a PVR-250 for my tuner card and hard drive 
> space
> is around 200 megs. Right now the options I see are:
>
> 1.) Leave things the way they are and watch the episodes through the
> Recorded Programs section of mythfrontend. I could leave the programs 
> as is,
> or transcode them into a smaller format, like MPEG4. This seems like 
> the
> least attractive method as there are many episodes and finding an 
> individual
> show to watch could take a while. Also, this would take the most 
> amount of
> space on the hard drive.
>
> 2.) Transcode into something smaller like Divx, then use mythVideo to 
> watch
> the episodes, if that is even possible. If mythVideo's frontend can be
> adapted to allow grouping of seasons, this could be a possible option.
>
> 3.) Leave everything as MPEG2 and then author them to DVD's. This 
> seemed
> like an attractive option, but it takes a long time, and will use a 
> lot of
> DVD's.
>

I've been trying to do something similar with a few tv shows and here's 
my two cents:

Your comment on #1 is correct, searching through multiple seasons worth 
of shows in the standard myth frontend is inefficient (altho having the 
episode summaries and little video previews is really cool). And on #3, 
converting to DVD has been problematic for me, especially when you get 
into wanting to do commercial cutting... leaving your option #2.

My process is to transcode an episode as you would normally. Then I 
just straight copy the file into my myth video directory.  I have a 
directory structure that makes it quick and easy to find episodes.  
Usually something like mythvideos/show_name/season/episode number - 
title.nuv  Mythvideo will detect the directory hierarchy and display it 
that way within the browser.  The only downfall to this is you miss out 
on having episode descriptions and you'll still be using quite a bit of 
space.

Also, if you find yourself spending a lot of time recording and 
organizing it all it might be worth while to invest in a simple raid 
card.  I had about 8 seasons of ER on my harddrive at one point, but 
after some hardware failure I lost all of them.

-- Sabin



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