With MythTV, there is a great (and mostly under-documented feature called Installing transcoding. What transcoding should do is resave your original recording -- but you can add edit areas to remove commercials, etc -- so that the end file is smaller than the original.
I tried it last night on a Food network show. While watching TV, I pressed "E", then set "cut points" by moving around w/ the arrows, and pressing space. When all points were set (I only wanted to save 30seconds of the show), press "E" again to go into playback mode. Then press "x" and you should see a message on screen indicating that transcoding is in process.
Then I waited about 2minutes and nothing happened. :( I forgot about it until this AM, when I checked my system from work using MythWeb. I saw that this recording had shrunk from 1 Gigabyte to only 148 MB, so I think transcoding may have worked! I won't know until I get home tonight.
These links below might help explain transcoding a teeny bit more.
MPEG2->MPEG4 transcoding under .12
transcoding not working in 0.12 (for me ;-)
Posted by mark at December 16, 2003 11:17 AM | TrackBack