---
date: "2006-01-18T02:48:06Z"
title: My MythTV Scripts for Mostly-Automated DivX Encoding
---

<p>Did I mention that I set up a <a href="http://mythtv.org/" title="Free Linux-based PVR/HTPC.">MythTV</a> machine several months ago?
Anyway, I don't use the <a href="http://mythtv.org/" title="Free Linux-based PVR/HTPC.">MythTV</a> front-end; A recording server in my
rack downstairs (<code>spud</code>) records scheduled programs. Afterwards, I
re-encode recorded episodes as <a href="http://divx.com/" title="A fast, free, portable, and well-supported MPEG4 codec.">DivX5</a>-compatible <acronym title="Motion Picture Expert Group">MPEG</acronym>4 files (in an
<acronym title="Audio/Video Interleaved">AVI</acronym>  wrapper) on a faster machine (<code>picard</code>, go ahead, laugh at the
hostname &mdash; you know you want to), then burn related shows off to
<acronym title="Digital Video Disc">DVD</acronym>.</p>

<p>I realize it's a slightly convoluted configuration, but it works
well given my hardware constraints, and the fact that my <acronym title="Digital Video Disc">DVD</acronym> player 
(a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000204SWE?v=glance" title="Awesome inexpensive DivX/XviD-capable DVD player.">Philips DVP642</a>), is <a href="http://divx.com/" title="A fast, free, portable, and well-supported MPEG4 codec.">DivX5</a>-aware.  That said, I'm posting
my scripts on the off-chance that pieces of them are useful to someone
who wants to set up a similar system. Here's what's included in the
tarball below:</p>

<ul>
<li>myth_convert.sh: convert <a href="http://mythtv.org/" title="Free Linux-based PVR/HTPC.">MythTV</a> NUV files to <a href="http://divx.com/" title="A fast, free, portable, and well-supported MPEG4 codec.">DivX5</a>-compatible
<acronym title="Motion Picture Expert Group">MPEG</acronym>4 files.</li>
<li>mi: A <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="The Ruby programming language.">Ruby</a> script to create filesystem-friendly names for <acronym title="Audio/Video Interleaved">AVI</acronym> 
files encoded with <code>myth_convert.sh</code>.</li>
<li>mim: quick shell script to create hard links based on an <code>egrep</code>-style
regular expression.</li>
</ul>

<p>A typical session is as follows:</p>

<pre><code># (after running myth_convert.sh)
# see what's encoded
mi | less 

mkdir dvd &amp;&amp; cd dvd

# create hard links to encoded episodes of that 70s show, the
# colbert report, and the daily show, 
mim 70s_ colbert daily_show

# remove the original cryptically-named <acronym title="Audio/Video Interleaved">AVI</acronym> files
mimrm 70s_ colbert daily_show

# create an iso of the <acronym title="Audio/Video Interleaved">AVI</acronym> files in the current directory,
mkisofs -r -R -J -o 70s-colbert-daily.iso *.avi

# burn a DVD of the episodes in question
sudo dvdrecord -dao -v -speed=8 dev=/dev/hdc 70s-colbert-daily.iso

# remove the <acronym title="Audio/Video Interleaved">AVI</acronym> and ISO files
rm *.avi *.iso &amp;&amp; cd .. &amp;&amp; rmdir dvd
</code></pre>

<p>If you decide to use these scripts, please look through them and edit
the paths (most have my shared <acronym title="Network File System">NFS</acronym> paths hard-coded), and double-check
to make sure they won't do anything wacky with your systems.  With that
in mind, here's the tarball:</p>

<p><a href="http://pablotron.org/files/pabs-mythtv&#95;scripts-20060118.tar.gz" title="A handful of MythTV convenience scripts I've written.">Download pabs-mythtv_scripts-20060118.tar.gz</a>
(<a href="http://pablotron.org/files/pabs-mythtv&#95;scripts-20060118.tar.gz.asc" title="OpenPGP signature for this tarball.">Signature</a>)</p>