Here's a sampling of the FAAD error messages generated by mplayer. There were gazillions of them. Sent through "sort -u" to be more concise here (so they're no longer in order).

I did another test today,and everything looked good. The converted file played, audio was good. It was a much smaller file I attempted to transcode for this second test - in case that makes any difference. The first test was 2.5Gb, the second test was 20Mb.

Any ideas?

I have done some pretty big files. 4+ gigs, so I don't think size "in this case) matters so much. I think you may have had a bum recording. Really, was that the only file giving you problems? Try some others and report back.

Just tried another one (one hour show, ~2.5Gb). Same problem. Massive FAAD errors, no audio, stuttering then freezing video.

I would have thought it was a problem with the FAAD decoding in MPlayer, except it's also a problem when I transfer the file over to a WinXP box and try to play it in iTunes. So it's got to be something in the transcoding. The raw mpg recording coming from the PVR-150 is fine. I will have to do more testing to narrow down where the problem occurs. My first troubleshooting session I commented-out myth2ipod's "rm" of the pre-MP4Box temp file, trying to isolate if MP4Box was the problem. Of course when I did that, BOTH the before-MP4Box and after-MP4Box file played just fine. Figures! That was the smaller 20Mb file however. So at this point I don't know if it's MP4Box or ffmpeg that's giving me trouble. I don't see anything in the nuvexport code that looks like it could cause the problem. I haven't dug into mythtranscode yet. My hunch is that it's ffmpeg. The transcoded mp4 files seem smaller than I expected. An hour show is roughly 2.5Gb straight out of the PVR-150, but only 160Mb to 210Mb after running through myth2ipod. More testing when I can get the time...