[godefroi]

I'm currently storing quite a lot of video recorded from OTA broadcasts (ATSC, in .ts files), and I'm wondering what settings people are generally using when they transcode to H.264. I'm not doing this for archival reasons, simply for disk space reasons, but I'd like to avoid losing much quality, if possible.

What are some suggested settings for doing these sorts of transcodes?

[Prof Yaffle]

I whack mine through Handbrake on a Normal profile, RF 20, making sure the interlacing is handled properly (unless you really like stipey TV shows). Doesn't take long to chew through SD MPEG2 at that setting. If you wanted to be really swish, you could use the CLI version of Handbrake (or the underlying ffmpeg if you fancy) to do it automatically to each recording as it finishes.

One thing I did notice is that Comskip on Windows chokes on variable frame rates (Comskip on Linux doesn't - see the thread elsewhere). Since HB defaults to this, you need to set this to CFR if you're planning to do any Comskip-shaped post-processing. It's easy enough to set this up as a preset, though.

As an aside, transcoding has a good go at fixing most of the OTA errors I see in .ts streams (much like passing the file through ProjectX, although more brutal for obvious reasons). However, I have had a few in which the audio track drops out completely at some point in the transcoded version: I'm guessing that the error(s) in the original file were too great at that point. One to watch out for if you plan on automating anything and not immediately checking the entire file.