Can someone please enlighten me as to the normal video encoding from the various inputs I have setup.

1. Firewire input from a Motorola DCT-6200 (on Comcast) - also, is it different for HD vs SD content? - my guess is not

2. OTA to HD3000 (using DVB drivers)

3. QAM via HD3000 (on Comcast) - don't have this setup yet

4. PVR-250 via coax connection - I think this is MPEG 2, but would like to confirm.

My end goal is to start some transcoding to cut commercials and save space. I will also want to put some on DVD at some point.

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AMD Athlon 64 3000+ on MSI K8T Neo
FX5200
pcHD3000
Firewire to Comcast cable box
PVR-250
R6

I am pretty sure the answer to all four is "MPEG2." I'm less sure about 1 and 3 as I don't use FireWire or QAM. But OTA ATSC is MPEG2, and the PVR cards encode their signals as MPEG2 as well.

Keep in mind that 1-3 are effectively just capturing the data and not really encoding anything. Only with #4 are you taking something (analog video signal) and encoding it to something else (MPEG2), thus you have the ability to set bitrates for your recordings.

All four are MPEG2 the only difference is going to be that #4 by default is MPEG2 PS (this will be changing in 0.19) whereas all the others are MPEG2 TS.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

A bit more info on the DCT-6200 used on the comcast network. HD channels seem to always be either 1920x1088i or 1280x720p resolution. SD channels seem to always be 720x480i.

Marc