[MEncoder-users] Can you slow down mencoder?

[Martin Ankerl]

> What I have to do is grab from the tv capture card to filename.avi, and
> while it's still grabbing from the
> tv card, run mencoder against filename.avi to also produce an identical
> file at a lower bitrate.  My
> problem is that the second mencoder runs faster than real time, catches
> up with the end of the file,
> and then exits while the primary encode is still running.

What about using pipes and tee, something like this (I cannot test
this as I currently have no Linux available):

# make a named pipe
mkfifo testfilename.avi

# start capturing
captureprog | tee testfilename.avi | mencoder settings-for-high-quality
cat testfilename.avi | mencoder settings-for-low-quality

tee splits the input from the capturing program and writes it to both
stdout and the named pipe. I think something like this should work,
but I am not shure if mencoder supports encoding from stdin :-)

-- 
Martin Ankerl | http://martinus.geekisp.com/