ShowSqueeze without transcoding

[DavidPotter]

I'm using BTV with an OTA antenna. Since stations broadcast material at different resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, etc.), I'd like to view it in the resolution it was broadcast. I'd also like to reduce the amount of space it takes up using ShowSqueeze. However, when configuring ShowSqueeze, I am required to specify a video quality which contains a specific setting for a resolution.

Is there a way to have ShowSqueeze compress a video file and maintain its resolution?

Thanks,
David

[tscales]

Are you just trying to strip out the subchannels and make the file smaller? Sounds like you are.

You don't want Showsqueeze, you want Streamsnip.

[DavidPotter]

That helps. Thanks for the tip. I get between 1/8 and 3/8 reduction in size - not insignificant for sure on the small sample of recorded programs I've tried so far.

I'm new to BTV and video compression. I'm under the impression that different video compression formats (MPEG-2, WMV, DiVX) provide different results for quality and file size and so was thinking that I might get better disk space usaging using, say, WMV but I still wanted to keep the same resolution. Is that an incorrect impression?

Thanks,
David

[tscales]

You can certainly do that, up to a point. For example, after much experimentation, when I do want to compress, I use DIVX HD High. For 720p content, it keeps the same resolution. For 1080i, it converts it to 720p. The difference is so small, I can't see it.

The only challenge is that you lose 5.1 sound, which I miss.

Honestly, I don't showsqueeze or streamsnip anything that I will be watching anytime soon. Not worth the hassle. I just buy lots of disk drives.

I'm a huge fan of the Seagate 750Gb drive. Very fast. Very quiet. Very big.