The VideoLAN Forums

My CEO has asked me to build a compliance recording system which takes in a constant bitrate transport stream (which may contain multiple programs) and transcode the TS to a lower bitrate. It's like a magic box which takes a 20Mbps TS as an input and output say a 5Mbps TS in real-time for archival.

The difficult part is that all the SI/PSI information like PAT,PMT,SDT,NIT,etc and whatever tables has to be preserved and resynchronized with all the transcoded video/audio in the TS. So this really involves demultiplexing all the programs in the TS, transcoding the video/audio of each program independently, and remultiplexing all the transcoded video with the original SI/PSI to a lower constant bitrate transport stream in real-time!

Can VLC or any other software ever do such a thing or is it just a dream of my CEO? I have been struggling with this and I don't have an answer. Any kind soul wants to give any comments on making this transcoding magic box or anywhere I can seek help? Thanks.

This would be ideal to be able to know the actual constant bit rate for a network connection. Unfortunately it has little to say about the quality and or compression necessary to gain the desired bit rate. As you say, a dream that will never be realized. But CBR recording is possible and you can experiment with this in a variety of formats. VLC uses VBR and can't be made to be true CBR.

See the doom9 forum and or http://www.videohelp.com for more info...