DVR creating huge files, make it smaller/compressed?

Derek Gordon

So, love TVHeadend and just got around to using the DVR functionality. It's quite neat as well. However, the MKV file for a 15 minute recording was nearly 2GB. Is there any way to reduce the quality or compress the file?

ProfYaffle

That's a little extreme - I normally get around 4Gb an hour for an HD (H.264) broadcast. I suppose it does depend on what your local provider is using, as I can imagine that an HD MPEG-2 DVB-T broadcast would be a good bit bigger than the equivalent H.264 DVB-T2.

So, while I can't say why your file is so large (multiple sound tracks?), you can post-process it through Handbrake or ffmpeg to re-encode to something smaller. tvheadend won't do it itself, it merely records what's broadcast, but it will call the script/command for you when it's finished.

Adam Sutton

HD H.264 in the UK is, as Prof. Y, points out about 4GB/hr, so I'd expect 1G for 15mins for most channels.

However that's based on standard entertainment channels (BBC One HD etc..), some movies and particularly sports can be up to double that. It really depends what your broadcaster is sending. TVH doesn't compress anything, it just re-packages (if you're using MKV) which will usually make it marginally smaller than TS format, since it will strip some stuff out.

Adam