[MEncoder-users] mencoder settings for Kinoma PalmOS media player?

[Joe Emenaker]

Howdy everybody!

I'm having lots of fun using mencoder to solve all of my transcoding 
needs, but there's one task that currently has me baffled.

I'm trying to rip whole DVD's to view on the Kinoma player on my PalmOS 
device. Kinoma supplies a "Kinoma Producer" app that transcodes videos 
to a format that the Kinoma Player likes, but it doesn't rip directly 
from DVD. So, I have to use a DVD ripper, to rip to a file (either 
wasting CPU by encoding to an intermediate format, or require excessive 
disk space by extracting the mpeg2 streams from the VOB's), and then 
re-encode that file with Kinoma Producer.

I figured that, as usual, mencoder probably offers a better way. So, I 
eventually found this site: 
http://tapland.com/mobile/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4180&sid=abf3037660a6782869907b8ef3401765

... where the guy says to do this:

mencoder -vf scale -zoom -xy 320 "<movie name>" -o "<avi name>" -oac 
lavc -ovc lavc -srate 11025 -af lavcresample=11025,volnorm -ofps 15 
-lavcopts 
acodec=mp3:abitrate=64:vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vmax_b_frames=2:vbitrate=200:v4mv:trell

Followed by a:
   ffmpeg -i <avi name> <mp4 name>

...to put the mpeg4 wrapper on the file.

First question: Can't mencoder do the mpeg4 wrapper, itself, so that I 
can skip the ffmpeg step?

Second question: It seems like there is a lot of redundancy in some of 
the command-line settings (ie, "lavcresample=11025" vs. "-srate 11025"). 
Are both of these needed?

Third question is the biggie. This guy's example didn't work. The Kinoma 
player wouldn't play it. Soooo.... I decided to take a file from Kinoma 
Producer (which does work) and run "mplayer --identify" on it and do the 
same to my test run and diff the outputs. Based upon that, I was able to 
tweak some things to eliminate some of the stuff showing up in the diff.

What I eventually got to is a mencoder.conf file containing:
> vf=scale=320:240
> zoom=1
> vop=scale=320:240
> oac=lavc=1
> ovc=lavc=1
> srate=44100
> af=lavcresample=48000,volnorm=1
> ofps=15.008
> lavcopts=acodec=mp3:abitrate=48:vcodec=mpeg4:vhq=1:vmax_b_frames=2:vbitrate=200:v4mv=1:trell=1
> alang=en
and then using a command-line of:
> mencoder dvd:// -o "test.avi" -frames 700
and then the ffmpeg conversion to MP4.

What I eventually get for the diff is this (the left file is the 
Good.MP4 and the right is the test.MP4):
> < Playing Good.MP4.
> < ISO: File Type Major Brand: ISO/IEC 14496-1 (MPEG-4 system) v2
> ---
> > Playing test.MP4.
> 11,12c10,11
> < VIDEO:  [mp4v]  320x240  24bpp  15.008 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
> < ID_FILENAME=Good.MP4
> ---
> > VIDEO:  [mp4v]  320x240  24bpp  15.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
> > ID_FILENAME=test.MP4
> 18c17
> < ID_VIDEO_FPS=15.008
> ---
> > ID_VIDEO_FPS=15.000
> 21c20
> < ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=48
> ---
> > ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
> 24c23
> < ID_LENGTH=3393.64
> ---
> > ID_LENGTH=46.67
> 37,38c36,37
> < AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 6->176400)
> < ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=48
> ---
> > AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
> > ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=128000

The only differences I can see are that the "good" video has a 
frame-rate of 15.008fps (.008?!?!? huh?) (versus 15.000 for the 
test.MP4) and the audio bitrate is listed in different places as "48" 
and "0.0kbit/0.00%" (versus the test.MP4 which has "0" and 
"128.kbit/9.07%" for the corresponding values).

Does anybody out there have any tips on how I can get the values on my 
test.MP4 to match those of the Good.MP4... or any other way to get the 
Kinoma player to play my vids? (And, yes, I know the TCPMP player can 
play more formats, but I like Kinoma's nice look and it's media browser).

- Joe