[mythtv-users] convert recordings to h264

[Ian Barton]

Richard Morton wrote:
> Ian,
> 
> Yes please!
> Are the transocdes to as near as possible original res and quality or 
> transcoded to diff framerate and res for handhelds?
> Thanks
> R
> 
>> On 10 Dec 2009 14:54, "Ian Barton" <lists at manor-farm.org 
>> <mailto:lists at manor-farm.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Adam Skinner wrote: > > Hi list. > I've been trying to convert my myth 
>> recordings to H.264 suitable...
>>
>> I think the problem you are seeing is because the Myth audio and video 
>> are slightly out of sync. Editing and transcoding the file without 
>> first fixing the sync error makes this worse.
>>
>> You need to do a lossless transcode first before converting to h264. 
>> Something like:
>>
>> /usr/bin/mythtranscode --showprogress --honorcutlist --mpeg2 -c 
>> channelid -s starttime -o outfile.mpg
>>
>> I have a python script that converts files to h264. It does commercial 
>> cutting and a lossless transcode first. I run it as a user job. I can 
>> pt it up on github if you think it might be useful.
>>
I'll do it over the weekend. To answer your question, my script reads 
configuration from a text file. It uses this to specify the command line 
options, so you can control the encoding. I have examples for iPods and 
Nokia phones.

You can have multiple profiles and use either ffmpeg or mencoder. The 
script can optionally email you its output. I find this useful for 
debugging and also to know when a script has finished.

I "misuse" the Recording Group in MythTV to specify the transcoding 
profile. For example I have a nokia group and recordings in this group 
will be transcoded using the nokia profile. You can produce different 
devices by changing the Recording Group and re-running the user job.

You many find that you need to build ffmpeg from source. The last time I 
tried the version in Ubuntu's repos, the support for x264 wasn't very 
good. However, instructions are provided and it's very straightforward.

You will also need the python bindings for MythTV installed.

Ian.