I am using the default settings for the most part on the mp4 setting. I record OTA programs much like a vcr (of course). Mostly seasonal movies (1.5 hours long) and the mp4 encodings are HUGE…1+gb or larger after encoded. It is standard OTA and not hd programing. Mostly i think they are 720 max but mostly 480. I cant figure out how to make the files turn out smaller. Most things i have seen for 1.5 hour movies should be around 700mb or so.
Is there a trick or setting to shrink these down more without losing too much more quality?
I have SD and HD profiles setup (1 for movies, one for shows, since I want them to be renamed in different directories). The SD profiles have a channel filter to only apply to the SD stations (*DT2;*DT3;DT4;) only the 1st channel is HD in my OTA area. The HD profiles filter for everything except those (;~*DT2;~*DT3;~*DT4).
Since they are separate profiles, you can adjust the quality/compression separately (more for HD recordings, less for SD since they’re already compressed more usually and low-res).
Hope that helps. I’m also using H.265 encoding as well, which gets more compression than H.264, especially for HD content.
Thanks! Ill check it out. I need to upgrade my version. IM a few years old now and for the life of me i cant figure out how to get the newest version without buy it again. I am sure the latest version has more features as well that may help some of the oddness i am running into.
You should be able to access the download site using the login and password you were given when you paid for it earlier. If you’ve lost that information, (taken from the MCEBuddy homepage):
Click here to retrieve your Username and Password.
Enter the eMail address from which the payment was made and your username and password will be instantly mailed to the same eMail address. (don’t forget to check your SPAM folder)
I’ve paid a couple of times because MCEBuddy is worth it to me. It simply makes handling my OTA recordings automagically better (no ads, transcode to x265 to minimize disk space, embed metadata in MKV container, and organize it ready for Plex to watch, either later on as each show airs or saving up the entire season to binge for the “B-list” shows.
Thankes. Yeah i cant find my original creds and get no password reset email no matter what email address i try. I beleive it sends it but i never get it. Maybe i just need to buck up and buy it again i guess. I am curious about trying the x265 encoding. Maybe i will get better results. Historically the OTA here is pretty bad no mater what i do and i cant seem to sort that out. My recordings are hit or miss. Some end up REAL choppy and with misalinged audio after encoding. THe source seems fine. It could be comskip messing it up or it could be just bad recording to start with i guess. I need to try it without comskip and see if i get the same result. Most of the time i find that comskip makes a mess. it leaves commercials in and skips sections of programs. Other times…it works just fine. I probably have some tweaking to do .