[MEncoder-users] mencoder skipping frames.

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 09:39:49AM -1000, AaronL wrote:
> Ok, I tried a couple of new runs with the above command, one with -oac 
> copy instead of lame and I get one skip frame for the entire 24000/1001 
> progressive section of the video, which is very good, but the whole 
> reason, i'm doing the conversion is for a smaller footprint.
> 
> My second run I tried the above command with lame, I get about 10 skip 
> frames and duplicate frames.  Some of the skip frames are quite 
> noticeable in playback.  Would you conclude that I have a buggy lame ?
> 
> I have lame 3.95 installed.  Is that a buggy version of lame to use with 
> Mencoder?  Is there a recommend version of lame to use?  Lame 3.95 works 
> fine for all my other standalone mp3 conversions without any problems.

It's not that lame itself is buggy. It's that mencoder's interface to
lame is buggy. :( It doesn't properly account for buffering.

> What else should I try?

Option 1: try CBR mode with lame. It might help, might not.
Option 2: use a really really old lame version. Not a great choice and
might not fully fix it, but helps.
Option 3: first encode video with -oac copy for audio. Then do one of
the following 2 things:

A. Take the output file and run it thru mencoder again with -ovc copy
-mc 0 -noskip -oac mp3lame ...

B. Dump the audio to a wav file (or fifo) with mplayer -ao pcm, encode
it with external lame, then remux with mencoder using -oac copy, -ovc
copy, and -audiofile.

Choice B is what I use; however for serious work I'll be encoding to
vorbis instead and muxing to ogm or mkv container (or in the future,
nut :).

Rich