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

[Tim]

awrobinson at nc.rr.com wrote:

>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
>  
>
The editing out commercials is easy. While playing it, press "e". This 
will put you in edit mode and pause playback. Then "z" to load the 
commercial marks. You can use pgup/pgdn, <, >, and leftarrow, rightarrow 
to move through the recording. Press enter to bring up a cutpoint menu. 
Esc out when done, then playback will resume. Press "M" for menu, select 
transcoding. You can then exit out to recording menu.

However, the converting nuv video files to a dvd compatible mpeg2 is 
apparently not so easy, I will let someone else tackle that one.

A lot of this stuff is probably out there if you search the mail-list 
archive <http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/> or 
website/wiki <http://www.mythtv.info/>.

Tim