Shrink mpg2?

[klaberte]

I tend to record my shows at a high bit rate. My Haupauge 250 creates mpg2 by default.

Sometimes I would like to later shrink a recorded show to a smaller size, to archive it via CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

What is a way to do this? Can I use the SageTVTranscoder.exe that comes with SageTV?

Can someone point to a HowTo, or simply provide some well commented command line examples?

Thanks,

Ken

[dvd_maniac]

To be more specific: You want to archive them to CD or DVD but do you want to play them on a specific player or only through the PC?

If you plan on playing them on a set top DVD player then leave them as mpeg-2 and you can either re-encode them or transcode them to shrink the size.
If you plan on only playing them through PC them you might want to encode them to mpeg-4 files. Either ASP or H.264, Much lower filesize at pretty much the same quality.

Let us know what your intended playback preferences are...

[Menehune]

I usually just take out commercials for shows I will keep for a moderate length of time, but other users on the board use compressors to shrink the shows for long term storage. I'm assuming they use something like Divx to compress them into avi or wmp files. I have burned DVDs of some shows that I want to keep off line.

[klaberte]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

To be more specific: You want to archive them to CD or DVD but do you want to play them on a specific player or only through the PC?

If you plan on playing them on a set top DVD player then leave them as mpeg-2 and you can either re-encode them or transcode them to shrink the size.
If you plan on only playing them through PC them you might want to encode them to mpeg-4 files. Either ASP or H.264, Much lower filesize at pretty much the same quality.

Let us know what your intended playback preferences are...

Basically, I am interested in the second option, i.e. making the file smaller, but still requiring a computer (not a DVD player) to play them.

How can you do this with the tools at hand? Since posting, it looks like VLC could be helpful in doing this.

Any suggestions are welcome.

[FritzsCorner]

I posted this link in another thread but you may find what you are looking for here. http://www.doom9.org It is great resource for all sorts of video conversion guides and tools.