Linux Real Time MPEG Compression?

aszoth asks: "I working on a project that is going to require approximately 4 hours of video recording per day for about two months. We are currently using DVM tapes, however the extraction and compression time has left us with a large library of tapes un-converted. We are considering other methods, in particular real time MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 Compression. We also would like to be able to slow down our frame rate from the 29.7 fps to something along the lines of 5-15 fps. I am wondering if any one has any suggestions on possible ways to do such compression (or get similar results) with a Linux box. Thank you for any help you can give."

Comments

hardware or software?

[LinuxGeek8]

You're not very clear on what hardware you have. If you have fast enough hardware you can do software compression in realtime. Use something like transcode or mjpegtools. I used transcode with ffmpeg plugins a few times.
These software packages can do mpeg2, maybe also mpeg4, though I'm not sure of that. They can do xvid and divx, if you're satisfied with that as mpeg4 alternative.
But if it's a lot of data, you need a lot of cpu power. It depends on the resolution and so...
A hardware encoder might suit you better then. Afaik there are only mpeg1 and mpeg2 encoders, even secondhand and cheap. I wonder if there are mpeg4 hardware encoders on the market.