[MPlayer-users] Long-time TV recording to DivX/AVI?

[Thomas Martinsen]

Rainer Hantsch wrote:

>Hello!
>
>Currently I use mencoder to record from cable TV. Works fine, but when some
>movies are following each other, it is not practical to record them one by one
>(because TV stations are often not in sync with their TV program.
>(ATV+ i.e. is absolutely horrible, once they got a difference of 10 minutes
>reaching 18:00 o'clock, delay still increasing...)
>
>So all I can do is recording across all movies plus 10-15 minutes at the end.
>
>Doing so, I usually get .avi files bigger than 2GB when I want to record in
>good quality -- but this causes my avidemux to indicate a broken index file
>and abort.
>So I have to split the huge file into smaller chunks first (using mencoder
>-ovc copy -oac copy -ss ........ ) to get chunks of i.e. 1 hour.
>In a third step I use avidemux for cutting out all commercials of every
>chunk, resulting in many little parts I finally have to concatenate to final
>movies.
>
>A lot of work could be saved, when mencoder would be able to automatically
>start a new file when the old one exceeds a defined filesize. This cannot be
>done by stopping one recording and immediately start a new one, because I
>would loose some seconds of content.
>
>All I see as working solution is that a feature is included into mencoder
>which allowes to specify a maximum filesize (by default it is infinite).
>
>One solution would be to have mencoder already having two encoders in the
>background. One is active, the other one in standby and waiting for data. When
>mencoder switches to the idle one, the first one has plenty time for finish
>the file and go into standby, while the other one already records to the new
>file.
>
>Of course, if mencoder is able to buffer some seconds without any frame loss
>from any kind of source, this may also be done with only one backend.
>
>
>
>Is something like this already included into mencoder?
>
>mfg
>
>  Ing. Rainer Hantsch
>
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>MPlayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
>http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users
>  
>
Write a shell script.
for a in 1 2 3 4 5;
do mencoder ..mencoder opts.. -endpos 01:00:00 -o output_$a.avi
done

This little script will encode 1 hour, then start on a new file and 
encode one new hour.. (encodes 5 files on 1 hour each)