Mythtranscode
Mythtranscode is the internal process used by the front end to transcode MythTV recordings.
Contents
Usage
Usage: mythtranscode <--chanid <channelid>> <--starttime <starttime>> <--profile <profile>> [options] --mpeg2 or -m: Perform MPEG2 to MPEG2 transcode. --chanid or -c: Takes a channel id. REQUIRED --starttime or -s: Takes a starttime for the recording. REQUIRED --infile or -i: Input file (Alternative to -c and -s) --outfile or -o: Output file --profile or -p: Takes a profile number or 'autodetect' recording profile. REQUIRED --honorcutlist or -l: Specifies whether to use the cutlist. --allkeys or -k: Specifies that the output file should be made entirely of keyframes. --fifodir or -f: Directory to write fifos to If --fifodir is specified, 'audout' and 'vidout' will be created in the specified directory --fifosync : Enforce fifo sync --buildindex or -b: Build a new keyframe index (use only if audio and video fifos are read independantly) --showprogress : Display status info to the stdout --verbose level or -v: Use '-v help' for level info --help or -h: Prints this help statement.
Choosing a Recording
Two methods are available to choose which recording to work on. The first is to specify the channelid and start time,
-c 1067 -s 2006-04-24-18-30-00
Unless starttime is formatted yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss, you get "QTime::setHMS Invalid time" and "QDate::setYMD: Invalid date" errors. According to http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2003-July/011650.html , it's been that way since 0.10.
The other method is to specify the file,
-i /MythTV/tv/1856_20060425200000.mpg
--honorcutlist Limitation
--honorcutlist only seems to work (0.19-fixes [9938]) with the "-c -s" switch combo, NOT with a specified input (-i) file, even if that file is in the mythconverg database.
(Virtually) Lossless MPEG2 Transcode
--mpeg2
New in 0.19 is a virtually lossless MPEG2 transcode. What this does is let you select cut points and mythtranscode will only re-encode the frames that need to be, copying the rest directly from the stream. If you are using this to cut commercials and you cut at the black frames of a fade to black (or white of a fade to white), what you get is basically a perfect stream copy of the video with no loss to the frames that matter.
This also has some side benefits,
- Converts the mpeg2 from a TS stream to a PS stream, possibly saving up to 20% of the file size!
- Fixes Audio/Video sync issues in a similar fashion to ProjectX.
Examples
Remove commercials from an MPEG2 recording
First, set a cutlist for the show. Then:
mythtranscode --chanid 1017 --starttime 2006-12-16-20-00-00 --mpeg2 --honorcutlist
This will drop the cut version beside the original, but with an added .tmp extension. I'm not exactly sure what it does to the database. It seems to keep the cutpoints and points at the old .mpg file, but shortens how long it thinks the movie is to the size of the .tmp file.