Can someone point me to some good documentation on video file compatibility?

I'm using a PVR 350 for capture and playback. When I move a nuv file over to a Windows machine and try to open it in VirtualDub it reads it as an interleaved MPEG-2 file but aborts with a message about "unexpected end of file" and won't play any portion of the recording.

Using the MythTV GUI I set up transcoder from MPEG2 to MPEG4. When I try to play the transcoded show in MythTV from the recordings menu it plays with video but no sound. When I transfer the resulting file to a Windows machine neither the DIVX player nor Windows Media Player will play it.

I have many recordings that I made on Windows using VirtualDub and encoded using DIVX 4. When I SMB share from Windows to MythTV under the /myth/video directory (I changed the configuration in the GUI, it was pointed at /var/lib/mythtv) the MythTV GUI lists the files in the View Videos section, but it won't play them. No error message is shown, it just won't play them.

I also created some divx files on my MythTV box by using the following command which I found posted somewhere:

mencoder <nuv filename>.nuv -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=600:vhq:vqmin=2:vlelim=-4:vcelim=9:lumi_mask=0.05:dark_mask=0.01 -vop scale -zoom -xy 320 -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=96 -o <encoded_filename>.divx

These files play in the DIVX player on Windows, but MythTV will not play them if I put them in the /myth/video directory. It finds the files, but gives no error and won't play them, just like DIVX files I created on Windows.


So, to make a long question short, where can I find good documentation of cross platform compatible video formats. I want to ensure that I can view files on MythTV and my Windows laptop regardless of source.

I don't know if you have found any help to your question but there is another post that covers it here:

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4395&highlight=windows+filters

When you fix mythpretty you can just download your movies and edit/watch them it works fine. The reason MPEG-4 doesn't work is because Mythtv uses ffmep to encode / transcode the video in to a MPEG-4 standard and not the DIVX code.

Hope this helps

Cheers

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