[mythtv-users] Archiving Shows to DVD

[Martin Bene]

> By the way, many of my recordings are transcoded to mpeg4... 
> Should I assume this script won't transcode them properly?

Unfortunately: yes, you should assume that. The script not only won't
transcode them properly, it won't transcode them at all :-)

The scripts assume that the original files are mpeg2 in a DVD comaptible
resolution (720x576 for pal and 720x480 for ntsc; 704x576 and 704x480
are also mentioned in the standard and should work, as should a few
low-res settings).

Transcoding differet formats is on the radar for the scripts, but not
right away.

Next thing I'll add is recoding mpeg2 audio to ac3 for ntsc DVDs - on
pal, mpeg2 is a required format for all players so no problems there. On
NTSC ac3 is required and mpeg2 optional; just another way to introduce
artifical regional incompatibilities in the DVD standard. Works nicely
on my system, just need to bundle it up as a tarball.

After that, I'd like to have bitrate reduction using tcrequant - some of
the DVB stations I receive broadcast at bitrates of ~ 7500kb/s which
comes to ~ 4GB per hour. Meaning: a feature length film won't fit on a
DVD as-is.

Once that works I might add transcoding of different formats - no
promises though: my system is DVB only, and I don't currently transcode
anything, so motivation is fairly low.

Bye, Martin