Adam's Blog

You can configure MythTv to automatically transcode recordings to other formats (iPod MP4 etc).

If you're using ubuntu hardy 8.04 (or some other package based distros) then you may need to compile ffmpeg from source to get xvid and other support.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ffmpeg is great, but fails to mention you need to enable support for mp3 with the option --enable-libmp3lame when you're running configure.

If you do not, you'll get the following error when running nuvexport. This refers to the audio codec mp3 not being supported.

Error while opening codec for output stream #0.1

To check what is supported run ffmpeg -formats. The output is a little cryptic. D and E refer to decode and dencode support. Also, don't confuse file (container) formats with the actual codecs...

Use mythweb (or the mythtv interface) to edit the entry "User job 1". This will be called after each file is recorded and transcoded. Mythweb -> settings -> mythtv -> settings table -> user job 1. Read for full details, including the need to restart myth backend etc.

/home/mythtv/mythexport.sh %FILE

Contents of /home/mythtv/mythexport.sh

Note you'll need ubuntu package mpeg4ip-server to get the mp4creator tool.

#!/bin/bash

#
# Simple wrapper to convert then upload
# mythexport <file>
#

DEST="user@host:/file/path/foo/bar/etc"

file="$1"

if [ "$file" = "" ]; then
  echo "Usage `basename $0` <file>"
  exit
fi;

# create a temporary directory and change to it
dir=`mktemp -d`
cd $dir

# transcode the video
nuvexport --profile adam --input $file

# Make the MP4 file playable before load completion
# i.e. without this the quicktime plugin (or other player)
# will download the entire file before playing it
mp4creator -hint=1 *.mp4
mp4creator -hint=2 *.mp4
mp4creator -optimize *.mp4

# upload
scp -l 512 *.mp4 $DEST

# clean up
rm *.mp4

New profile in /etc/nuvexportrc

<profile::adam>

    underscores=yes
    filename=%m - %t - %s
    date=%Y-%m-%d %H:%M

    vbr          = yes
    multipass = yes
    export_prog = ffmpeg
    mode        = mp4

    width        = 320
    height       = auto

    a_bitrate    = 96
    v_bitrate    = 400

</profile::adam>