[vdr] Re[2]: live divx recording patch

[emmtee@gmx.de]

On the DIVX-Record-Patch:

it's a patch to stream into mencoder (mplayer project - http://www.mplayerhq.hu).
It allows to send the data stream to virtually any shell command which accepts
data from a pipe. The patch provides some pre-defined setups made for mencoder.

The patch does not provide a VDR record replacement - it's just a space-saver.
No cutting or native VDR playback included - but you can use the mplayer patch as
playback service :)

The intention is to provide an easy interface to archive regular broadcasts, series...
on machines, which are low on HD-space or for Broadcasts with little - but required -
visual information.

A 30 minutes recording with an appropriate setup requires about 140MB space
to be good in quality. This allows to put about 2,5 hours on one 700MB CD
without the need of re-encoding the files once saved.

If your intentions require hi-quality or cutting with VDR, then you'll
still need the old-fashioned off-stream encoding.

Here a test-setup which i did today in order to "benchmark" the codec a bit:

Bytes     File   BR   X   Y   Quality
-------------------------------------
 10731058 main.pes
  4964800 result_1200_400_300_Q2.avi
  4196910 result_1000_268_200_Q3.avi
  3537434  result_800_268_200_Q3.avi
  2862200  result_600_268_200_Q1.avi
  2853634  result_600_268_200_Q3.avi  = 3,76 x longer record time
  2855888  result_600_268_200_Q5.avi

The most relevant number is the bitrate as it controls the growth-rate of the file.
Please note that the patch allows toggling it on and off via OSD.

Using lameMP3enc to re-encode the audio stream did not yield a big
compression... so audio stream copy is the best setting for most tasks here.

I must say i love this patch because it allows me to archive a nice 200-episodes
broadcast without the fuzz of having to free up GIGs of space...

Regards,
emmtee@gmx.de


PS: the results are quite nice when encoding-fps around are 20..25 FPS.
If the system drops below this rate, then too many frames will be
dropped out of the pipe, causing content-skips in the recorded file.