How to transcode only SD not HD recordings

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chipsugar
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Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 12:21 pm
Great Britain

How to transcode only SD not HD recordings

Post by chipsugar »

Hello,

I'm a long time (15yrs+) user of MythTV for UK DVB recordings, but have never transcoded recordings until now.

I want to start transcoding recordings after about 2-4 weeks but NOT any HDTV recordings.

The reason is simple.  UK HDTV is already in h264 so there will be little gain in transcoding that.  Also my cpu and gpu are quite weak so transcoding to h265 for either hd or sd content will not be worth it. My plan is to convert only sd mpeg2 to h264.

I've identified the script that I want to use ( https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Example_Scr ... fodir_mode)  but I would like advise on how to automatically transcode just SD recordings
white_haired_uncle
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Location: Safe outside my gilded cage
United States of America

Re: How to transcode only SD not HD recordings

Post by white_haired_uncle »

Well, if you know that episodes from series X will always be HD, and series Y will not, just use use different post processing options in your recording rules.

If episodes from series X could be either HD or SD, I would think you could have two recording rules for series X, with one using a schedule filter for HD-only, and different post processing rules between the two. Obvious issue there is an HD recording would be valid even if HD-only is not selected. I'd kind of hope myth would choose the most specific rule to avoid this, or perhaps you could use a higher priority on the HD-only rule (assuming you actually want this, in many cases I prefer SD).

I've never used custom recording rules, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could make one that says NOT HD.

Or just modify the script to check for HD and exit.

Can't look right now, since it seems myth now DEMANDS shutting down mythbackend just to even look at the mythtv-setup GUI (or maybe that's an Ubuntu packaged version thing, I just made a bunch of changes so I can't say for sure what broke)[1], but I think transcode rules might say something like "from MPEG2", if you don't might using the built-in tool instead of an external script.

[1] I take it back, you can access mythtv-setup w/o stopping mythbackend. You just need to say it's okay to stop backend when prompted, then cancel when it asks for a password.
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