Any way to reduce the filesize of VDR recordings?

Hi,

I have TV_file.ts and its about 1.3g, any way to set it to another encoding format? like H264 MP4 codec? or other compressed file format?

Or do you think use an video editor to trim the file then convert it in one go? If so which one for Linux?

Many Many Thanks

You will have to reencode it yourself if you want it to be smaller.

VDR just dumps the broadcast stream in full quality (as it should). So if you record a HD channel it's going to be usually be in H264 and pretty big! If it's SD it'll usually be in MPEG2 and smaller.

How well any transcoding whilst recording will work totally depends on the speed of the system doing the job. It can be quite a CPU intensive job.

Personally I find the best option is to have a reasonable sized hard drive to record on and then just delete after watching.

if I want to keep recordings I transcode them (up to 80% compression ratio) - if you use Windows take "Freemake Video Converter" which has excellent GPU-acceleration, with Linux try "Handbrake" or "Arista Transcoder" (unfortunately without GPU acceleration, but hope GStreamer an ffmpeg will add it soon) .. but if your PC has enough power you can add all the recordings to a queue in the morning and let it trancode the stuff in background while watching TV or using XBMC.

This works fine on my Celeron G530 with 4 GB RAM ..

Here are the Handbrake parameters I use under linux to recode hdtv streams, and deinterlace them.

script: encodehdtv2mkv.sh:

HandBrakeCLI -i $1 -t 1 -o $2 -f mkv -w 1280 -l 720 --deinterlace="slower" --decomb -Z "High Profile" -E ac3 -2 -a $3 -T -r 25

call it like this:

./encodehdtv2mkv.sh sourcefile outputfile audiotrack

ah, nice to see ! Will try it, didn't know that there is a console command for handbrake .. makes the conversation process easier than using the GUI ..

hotlobster Wrote:Here are the Handbrake parameters I use under linux to recode hdtv streams, and deinterlace them.


HandBrakeCLI -i $1 -t 1 -o $2 -f mkv -w 1280 -l 720 --deinterlace="slower" --decomb -Z "High Profile" -E ac3 -2 -a $3 -T -r 25

How long does it take to encode 1 hour with those parameter ? What is your cpu ?

It's an old core 2 duo 3ghz , and it encodes at around 8 fps, so around 4h30 for a 90mn movie.