[mythtv-users] Re: Hardware Recommendations?

Scott Alfter mythtv at salfter.dyndns.org
Sat Jun 4 21:34:30 UTC 2005


Todd Bowman wrote:
> I've looked at the HW MPEG2 encoders but MPEG2 seems to take up too much
> room.  I tried using the SW MPEG2 encoding in MythTV and within one day
> my 160GB disk was filled.  Even though I turned on automatic transcoding
> to MPEG4, the recordings just seemed to get ahead of the transcoding. 
> Once the disk was full, it couldn't transcode any more.  Do the HW
> encoders produce smaller video files?  I don't remember the exact file
> size but I think a 2.5 hour program was something like 26GB! (640x480)

Your bitrate must've been set way too high if you were burning through 10
GB/hr.  I'm guessing you were recording at somewhere around 20-25 Mb/s, which
is insane.  I get pretty good quality at about 6 Mb/s (with the video sampled
at 480x480), and I've never run out of disk space.  (Then again, I also have
~340 GB (real gigabytes, not salesman's gigabytes) across three drives) for
video storage.)

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