[mythtv-users] Question on recording sizes and DVD burning

Wed Jan 22 01:02:16 UTC 2014

On 01/21/2014 06:17 PM, John Finlay wrote:
> On 1/21/2014 2:03 PM, Joseph DeGraw wrote:
>> On 01/21/2014 04:16 PM, John Finlay wrote:
>>> On 1/21/2014 8:51 AM, Joseph DeGraw wrote:
>>>> On 01/21/2014 11:32 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
>>>>> On 21/01/14 15:21, Joseph DeGraw wrote:
>>>>>> On 01/21/2014 09:56 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
>>>>>>> On 21/01/14 14:27, Joseph DeGraw wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 01/21/2014 09:08 AM, Joseph DeGraw wrote:
>>>>>>>>> A while ago I upgraded my hardware to include HD recording with a
>>>>>>>>> ceton
>>>>>>>>> card and its been great. However, My girlfriend wants to burn
>>>>>>>>> some of
>>>>>>>>> her shows to DVD that are 2 hours long. However the size of the
>>>>>>>>> files
>>>>>>>>> are like 10 gigs. In mytharchive they can come down to just
>>>>>>>>> over 5
>>>>>>>>> gigs.
>>>>>>>>> The shows are 1920x? HD from comcast provider. I was thinking
>>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>>> reducing them to 720i would be fine to make them smaller to
>>>>>>>>> fit on
>>>>>>>>> DVD.
>>>>>>>>> This brings up transcoding (which Im looking into right now) and
>>>>>>>>> profiles.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> How do you handle this?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> jdegraw
>>>>>>>> Ok, I have gone into the menu in mytharchive after reading an
>>>>>>>> older
>>>>>>>> thread and selected a recording profile. I guess my only question
>>>>>>>> is :
>>>>>>>> What do the different profiles mean?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> HQ, EP, LP, SD
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I know if I select a SD setting it will not finish and stalls
>>>>>>>> out. I
>>>>>>>> dont even get an error message. Therefore, Iam trying the LP one
>>>>>>>> for a
>>>>>>>> single sided DVD for a 10 gig, 2 hour Lifetime Network movie.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> MythTV .27 / Mythbuntu 12.04 based
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> With much of the USA now apparently HD only this is clearly
>>>>>>> getting to
>>>>>>> be a common problem, and at present I don't think MythArchive
>>>>>>> handles
>>>>>>> it well.  The encoder options are defined here: (Fedora build)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> /usr/share/mythtv/mytharchive/encoder_profiles/ffmpeg_dvd_ntsc.xml
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> and are used within
>>>>>>> /usr/share/mythtv/mytharchive/scripts/mythburn.py
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I suspect that the best option would be two-pass specifying the
>>>>>>> required file size; a fairly minor edit of the HQ option, probably,
>>>>>>> but requiring some research in the ffmpeg documentation or code.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As far as I can see the -b:v value doesn't do much.  The pal-dvd
>>>>>>> profile, which I use, seems to focus on a q value of 2 as its
>>>>>>> guiding
>>>>>>> light.  That isn't specified in the file above.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If at present you are getting a 5 GB file the m2vrequantiser option
>>>>>>> within MythArchive will shrink that quickly with a quality that
>>>>>>> should
>>>>>>> be acceptable, but I wouldn't like to rely on it for much higher
>>>>>>> ratios.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> HTH
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> John P
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>>>>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>>>>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thank you John,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, It seems that SP is the profile to use on these large HD
>>>>>> recordings.
>>>>>> Iam having a problem that it seems to take a rather long time to run
>>>>>> mytharchive and it seems to be stuck at this point:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *mythffmpeg -threads 6 -v 1 -i
>>>>>> "/var/lib/mytharchive/temp/work/1/newfile.mpg" -r ntsc -target
>>>>>> ntsc-dvd
>>>>>> -b:v 4771k -s 720x480 -acodec copy -copyts -aspect 16:9
>>>>>> "/var/lib/mytharchive/temp/work/1/newfile2.mpg" -map 0:0 -map 0:1 *
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I see that mythmmpeg is still running and taking up ALOT of CPU
>>>>>> time.
>>>>>> Using 'Top' it shows approximately 200 in cpu usage. Seems to
>>>>>> just sit
>>>>>> there for hours. Is this normal? I dont have any error messages
>>>>>> in any
>>>>>> of the logs - mythburn.log, progress.log, kern.log.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What does show in 'top' is that mythmmpeg is still running and
>>>>>> sometimes
>>>>>> will spawn another mythmmpeg process.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> jdegraw
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, I think it's normal.   That's one of the problems.  Try
>>>>>
>>>>> mythffmpeg  -v verbose -i "infileHD.mpg" -target ntsc-dvd
>>>>> "outfileSD.mpg"
>>>>>
>>>>> on a short recording and see how it goes.  I'm not sure how far my
>>>>> experience, with h264 recordings, relates to yours, but the -copyts
>>>>> seemed to be the main problem for me.  ffmpeg -i <filename> should
>>>>> show what you're dealing with.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>>>
>>>> I will give that a try. Thank you very much for your responses.
>>>>
>>>> I did try it earlier on a 1/2 show and it did a good job and burned
>>>> the
>>>> cd. Currently, mythffmpeg is still running but at a lower cpu use.
>>>> But I
>>>> dont see any disk activity. So, Im going to just let it run till this
>>>> afternoon. I will also try your suggestion and see what I get.
>>>>
>>>> Last time I actually ran out of swap space. So, I bought an
>>>> additional 4
>>>> gigs to boost me to 8 gigs. Now that is not a problem anymore :)
>>>>
>>>> Nothing in the error logs and mytharchive log still shows the
>>>> mythffmpeg
>>>> command line in the log as the last entry. Perhaps I assumed that
>>>> something was going wrong and killed the process, removed the lock
>>>> file
>>>> and cleaned up the temp directory when I should have just let it run
>>>> instead?
>>>>
>>> I gave up using mytharchive and use mythffmpeg to transcode my HD
>>> programs for making DVDs and use a command line like:
>>>
>>> mythffmpeg -i <inputfilename>.mpg -map 0:0 -map 0:<1 or 2>
>>> -deinterlace -target ntsc-dvd -aspect 16:9 -acodec copy
>>> <outputfilename>.mpg
>>>
>>> The -map 0:<1 or 2> is used to select the best audio channel which
>>> usually is ac3 5.1. I leave out the -deinterlace if the program is
>>> 720p. I copy the audio since I see no reason to transcode it to mp2.
>>> For a 120m movie in 1080i it takes about 140m using my old dual core
>>> AMD and produces a file which is about 4.1G. The transcode uses about
>>> 120% CPU according to top.
>>>
>>> Then I use dvdauthor and mkisofs to gen the ISO.
>>>
>>> John
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>> Ok, Adding to my last post (sorry) I guess the reason it takes soooooo
>> long for me is that Iam rescaling a 1920x<whatever> recording with a bit
>> rate of 9000 to a 720 resolution and a bit rate of 4771.
>>
>> I will just let it run and see how long this thing goes. Probably look
>> around to see if this thing is broadcast in 720 instead. Then I dont
>> have to convert the video and it will probably take alot less time.
>>
>> jdegraw
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>
> Actually it seems that you are transcoding to 480 not 720. The
> confusion is that you are going from 1920x1080 (1080i) to 720x480
> (480i) . Try a command similar to mine and see if that works better.
> If so then the command generated by mytharchive is likely the problem.
>
> John
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
John,

Im running your settings right now. This will probably take a while and
not sure if I will still be awake when it finishes. I noticed you didnt
use the 'threads' option in your command line for mythffmpeg. Any reason?

jdegraw