[mythtv-users] OT, general and long: transcoding

[awrobinson at nc.rr.com]

I'm new to MythTV and fairly new to digital video. A concept I'm trying
to understand is transcoding and how its used in MythTV. 

First, what exactly is transcoding? As I understand it, it's any
processing of a video file that changes something, like format or
resolution. Changes within a format are done with filters. Is this
anywhere close to reality?

Here's a senario I'm interested in. I'd like to record my
mother-in-law's favorite soap opera each weekday. I'd like to remove the
commercials. Then at the end of the week, I'd like to create a DVD of
that week's episodes. The last part I think I know how to do. I've been
using dvdauthor for about a year. Recording the episodes is trivial with
Myth. I've figured out how to get Myth to flag commercials. The part I
think I'm missing is getting Myth to transcode the video to actually
remove the commercials and output in a format acceptable for DVD
authoring. So can this be done and if so how?

I guess what I really want are tutorials on transcoding. I can read the
man page for mencode, but it doesn't mean much because I don't know what
the options do. Anyone have pointers to some tutorials? After that,
where would I find documentation on how transcoding works in Myth?

Thanks for helping the newbie.

Andrew Robinson