[MEncoder-users] Using SI units in mencoder

[Tetsuo Yokozuka]

Hi,

I find it annoying that neither the man page or the application itself
uses SI units. I just ripped a DVD by specifying the target size for
the video stream, in kB (kilobytes), following the man page, only to
find out that mencoder does NOT use kilobytes, but kibibytes instead.
As a result, my .avi was 15 MiB too large.

kB = kilobyte = 1000 B
KiB = kibibyte = 1024 B

Powers of 10 are used by hard drive, DVD-R and flash memory
manufacturers, as well as in bitrates, whereas powers of two are used
by CD-R manufacturers, and filesystems. It is too confusing for not
using the appropriate units and notations.

A 128kbps MP3 file is encoded at 128,000 bits per second. A 2Mbps avi
file is encoded at 2,000,000 bits per second. A 700 MiB avi file takes
up 734,003,200 bytes. I don't care what unit is used in mencoder, just
use it correctly, please!
Even if you reject SI units for whatever reason, at least specify in
the man page that you are in fact using powers of two or ten.

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html