I record an episode of Dateline NBC because one of my family members wanted to see it, but she wasn’t going to be home to catch the episode. After much fooling around I finally got something that worked well.
So I’m tossing this here in hopes I will remember it and that someone else will find it useful.
The recording was in HD at a resolution of 1920×1280.
mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=6000:keyint=18:trell:aspect=16/9:acodec=ac3:abitrate=224:threads=4 -ofps 30000/1001 -o output.mpg input.mpg
And as another note: When you have a 16/9 video and you scale it to 720×480 (4/3) it will show the full frame to the wide screen tv (making the video look correct) or it will be stretched on a fullscreen television if the dvd player is outputting 4/3 letterbox. If the dvd player is outputting in cropped mode it will cut the extra width of and just show you the 4/3 portion.
^^ – This is how I understand the processes. It may be extremely wrong. If it is and you have a better understanding please let me know!
