<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I am pretty sure that I will encode at 640x480 but don't know about any<br>other settings or how they will affect file size. For a normal 1-hour show
<br>(most of our favorites are this long), what kind of file sizes am I looking<br>at? This will affect the size of the hard disk I buy for the storage.</blockquote><div><br>
</div></div>I doubt that you can see the difference between a 720x480
pixel and a 480x480 pixel recording, so I would recommed go down to
480x480 pixels. That saves 25% of the data.<br>
If you want to export to DVD you might however consider 720x480 pixels and keep the recordings in MPEG2.<br>
Also if you want to use the output of a PVR-350 you should keep the
recordings in MPEG2. In all other cases you can let MythTV transcode to
MPEG4.<br>
<br>
The encoding rate is very much up your personal taste. If your signal
is bad you need a higher data rate. I usually record 480x576 pixels
(PAL) at 4.5 Mbits/s in MPEG2 and transcode it to 1.4 Mbits/s in MPEG4.
On some channels I can see the artifacts, on others I can't (except in
special situations like fast scrolling text).<br>
Shows that I want on DVD are recorded at 720x576 pixels at 4.5 Mbits/s in MPEG2.<br>
<br>