[mythtv-users] Archiving Shows to DVD

[Jim Reith]

At 02:29 PM 8/29/2005, you wrote:
>On 8/29/05, Martin Bene <martin.bene at icomedias.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 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
>
>I've been following this thread for a few days, and hoped to try out
>the scripts sometime this week. However, after seeing this post it
>appears as though I need some clarification.
>
>If I understand correctly, if I have already transcoded programs from
>MPEG2 (recorded from PVR250s and/or PVR500) to MPEG4, then I cannot
>use these scripts to burn to DVD. Is this correct?
>
>I guess what I need to do is start recording programs with a different
>profile, so that they will not be automagically transcoded, if I want
>to burn them to DVD. Please confirm...

Yes, this scripts only massage the containers, it doesn't re-encode the
program. Works very well if you have mpeg2 from a pvr-xxx board. I'm
playing around with a version that will also transcode because I did a
bunch of recordings initially at 480x480 resolution so make sure you're
also recording at 720x480 (for NTSC)