[gentoo-user] OT - MythTV recording - file size

[gentoo-user] OT - MythTV recording - file size

[Michael Sullivan]

I recorded a two-hour movie off telivision this evening.  I watched it
and it looks fine, but the file size is really big:  4.3GB.  Is this
normal?  As I said, the file was recorded by mythtv; it has a .nuv
extension.  I didn't recognize that extension, so I looked at its
properties in nautilus.  Properties claims that it's an MPEG video file,
but that seems rather large for a two-hour mpeg.  I used to download
two-hour movies off of gtk-gnutella that were around 650MB.  Is there
anything I can do to get the file size down so that it can fit on a CD?
My wife's birthday is a week from today, and although I bought the movie
on DVD for her (and actually have it hidden in the bedroom ATM), she
doesn't know that and she would like it backed up to CD, but 4.3GB won't
fit on a CD.  Any hints?

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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - MythTV recording - file size

[Willie Wong]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 12:00:47AM -0600, Penguin Lover Michael Sullivan squawked:
> I recorded a two-hour movie off telivision this evening.  I watched it
> and it looks fine, but the file size is really big:  4.3GB.  Is this
> normal?  As I said, the file was recorded by mythtv; it has a .nuv
> extension.  I didn't recognize that extension, so I looked at its
> properties in nautilus.  Properties claims that it's an MPEG video file,
> but that seems rather large for a two-hour mpeg.  I used to download
> two-hour movies off of gtk-gnutella that were around 650MB.  Is there
> anything I can do to get the file size down so that it can fit on a CD?
> My wife's birthday is a week from today, and although I bought the movie
> on DVD for her (and actually have it hidden in the bedroom ATM), she
> doesn't know that and she would like it backed up to CD, but 4.3GB won't
> fit on a CD.  Any hints?
> 

just because it is MPEG it doesn't tell you anything. The size really
depends a lot on the frame rate and resolution. For comparison:
  The movie Hero is 99 minutes long. VCD encode to 352x240 using
  MPEG1 at 30fps gives 1.1G total (2 VCDs). 
And my guess is that your file is in MPEG2, which, according to the
moving picture experts group, is for "transport, video and audio
standards for broadcast-quality television." At broadcast quality NTSC
you should expect 3Mbps * 3600s/hr * 2 hr / 8 = 2.6GB. If you have
PAL, then it goes up to roughly 5Mbps * 3600 * 2/8 = 4.4GB. So it is
not unexpected.
  http://erg.abdn.ac.uk/research/future-net/digital-video/mpeg2.html
If you want it on a CD, it would have to be rather poor quality. It
would do you better to try to burn it on a DVD if you can. 

But, if you must burn it to CD, try 'ffmpeg' and set the output type
to vcd. You might be able to get it down to 2 discs, instead of 7. 

As a side note: it can't be that hard to "procrastinate" burning the
disc for a week..., or you can pretend to burn it... and only burn the
first 20 minutes. Do you think she's actually going to watch the burnt
disc to make sure you have a complete copy on it? There are multiple
ways of solving this problem. =)

HTH

W
-- 
I am not a physics major. I am not a physics major. I will never be a physics 
major. I never will want to be a physics major. I can never be a physics 
major.                           ~Daniel Jonathan Peng
Sortir en Pantoufles: up 57 days, 23:20
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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - MythTV recording - file size

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:00:47 -0600, Michael Sullivan wrote:

> I recorded a two-hour movie off telivision this evening.  I watched it
> and it looks fine, but the file size is really big:  4.3GB.  Is this
> normal?

Certainly. The size depends on the quality at which it has been recorded,
and this is about the right size for a DVD quality MPEG. Of course
recording from broadcast TV at DVD quality is rather pointless.

> Is there
> anything I can do to get the file size down so that it can fit on a CD?

ffmpeg is probably the easiest way to do this, but make sure you emerge
it with the doc USE flag or you won't get the man page, which contains
some examples of this sort of thing.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

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