Re-encoding transport stream (TS) video

[jugi]

Hello!
I'm living in the northern europe and DVB system is used here with MPEG2 video encoding. I have recorded full transport stream and then used player such vlc to display the content. Transport stream (TS) has also subtitles and other information as EGP data that I would like to keep. How ever even SD PAL MPEG2 video takes lot of space and it would be nice o reduce the amount some how.

Could it be possible to process the whole transport stream and just re-encode the video part to mpeg4 format. If I have understanded right the DVB standard should allow this. Then I could keep the original TS data like subtitles, EGP but reduce the video data size. (like DVD shrink).

I don't want to hear comments like no sense etc. Of course it has sence, my computer has lot of spare time and it could to something usefull..

The encoding process could be offline and it would be nice to specify that "inspect all files in this directory tree and re encode those with mpeg2 video content".

Result would be mpeg4 dvb transport stream.... with all existing additional data...

Software name could be "DVB Shrink" or ofcourse idea could be used with ATSC etc..

What do you think?

[halsboss]

And you'd do what with the mpeg4 ? Can't burn it to DVD as it won't play on a standalone player... not in DVD spec. Why not encode straight to standard to mp4 container if you're leaving them all on your (huge?) hard drive. With a tool like ffmpeg you could write your own .BAT or .VBS scripts to do it simply I guess.
Edit: oh, I see, it wouldn't contain the additional gear you specified.

[Landon]

Technically it is possible. You are correct, you can put H.264 content in a transport stream.

The trouble is going to be finding a tool to re-mux your streams while preserving your additional data pids. I do not believe any tool built against ffmpeg, like vlc or mencoder, will be able to do it.

I recommend giving VLC a try if you are familiar with it. It will be able to transcode your content to H.264 (albeit poorly) and spit out a TS.

Please post if you find a solution. I have been looking to do this as well.

[jugi]

And you'd do what with the mpeg4 ? Can't burn it to DVD as it won't play on a standalone player... not in DVD spec. Why not encode straight to standard to mp4 container if you're leaving them all on your (huge?) hard drive. With a tool like ffmpeg you could write your own .BAT or .VBS scripts to do it simply I guess.
Edit: oh, I see, it wouldn't contain the additional gear you specified.

Yes excactly, I dont want to burn it to dvd, neither I want to play it with my standalone player. I Just want to store the data to my NAS system. I want to preserve all extra bits like dvb subtitles (common in nordic countries, extra multilangual sound tracks etc.)

Is there existing a container that can do this for me?

I have understanded that it is possible to use h 264 video in the dvb TS to transport either HD or SD transmission.

So the it should be possible to convert DVB mpeg2 TS to dvb h264 TS?

Idea is a "DVB Shrink" application.

[pandy]

it is possible but AFAIR there is no good and reliable free muxer for h.264 or VC1. If you transcode h.262 to the h.264 also You must change some information in PMT/PAT, also EIT and other linked tables must be upgraded, additionally whole stream should be repacked (less packets with particular video data due higher compression of h.264 - of course You may add some stuffing but this is waste of space). So it is not sa trivial. Even for h.262 there is no good and reliable software remuxer (even highly priced muxers have some problems with VBR MPEG-2, plenty of tables etc etc etc).
At first try to use demo version of manzanita muxer but from my knowledge manzanita is far from perfect...