Encoding PAL over MPEG-TS with VLC

Or: "Using VLC to generate a PAL MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) carried over RTP"

Multiple setting combinations are described here. It is the intention that you save the combination of settings you want to a file, and use this file as a alternate config file for VLC.

Don't be alarmed, on first start, VLC will re-order the options, and all the default settings will be added as comments.

Under linux vlc --config myconfig.cfg

If you want to change things interactively you can go the Tools ; Preferences menu entry. (or Ctrl-P).

examples

An example to use VLC to send a 720x576@25 MPEG transport stream over RTP. The RTP destination is localhost:5001 for the complete stream.

sout-rtp-dst=localhost
sout-rtp-mux=ts
sout-rtp-port=5001
sout-rtp-ttl=1

sout-transcode-venc=avcodec
sout-transcode-vcodec=mp2v
sout-transcode-vb=1000
sout-transcode-fps=25.000000
sout-transcode-width=720
sout-transcode-height=576
sout-transcode-acodec=mpga
sout-transcode-channels=2
sout-transcode-samplerate=44100
sout-transcode-high-priority=1

sout-ts-use-key-frames=1
sout-ts-crypt-audio=0
sout-ts-crypt-video=0

sout=#transcode:rtp
sout-display=1
sout-keep=1
advanced=1

The sout-transcode-vb=1000 is important, otherwise you get very low bandwith video.

If you want manual assignments for the different packet streams you can add:

sout-ts-pid-video=100
sout-ts-pid-audio=101
sout-ts-pid-spu=102
sout-ts-pid-pmt=33

To specify the netid:

sout-ts-netid=1001

Encoding MPEG-TS PAL over RTP from the commandline

vlc -vvv --sout=#transcode{venc=ffmpeg{qscale=31},vcodec=mp2v,fps=25,width=720,height=576,acodec=mpga,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:rtp{dst=localhost,port=5001,mux=ts{pid-video=162,pid-audio=88,pid-pmt=32},ttl=1} :sout-keep

qscale

For the qscale settings http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2007/05/24/ffmpeg-quality-comparison/ might be of interest.