[MEncoder-users] mencoder exhausts system memory while encoding MPEG2

[Ryan T. Sammartino]

I am using

MEncoder dev-SVN-r23715-4.1.2 

configured with

./configure --prefix=/usr --confdir=/etc/mplayer --enable-largefiles


I am trying to use mencoder to "burn in" some subtitles:

mencoder video.vob -of mpeg -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts
acodec=ac3:abitrate=256:vcodec=mpeg2video:vbitrate=7000:keyint=150 -ofps 24
-srate 48000 -sub subtitles.srt -subfont-autoscale 1 -subfont-osd-scale 4 -o
"video-with-subtitles.vob"


Unfortunately, about 15% of the way through, mencoder starts using more and more
memory:  according to "top", it starts off using about 1.5%, but as soon as it
hits 15% of the way through the file, it starts jumping rapidly.  Once it is
about 20% of the way through, "top" reports ~45% usage.  Eventually, system
memory is exhausted, and things start getting killed.

This behaviour is observed for different input files from different input
formats (I've tried MKV, MP4, and VOB), although the details differ: sometimes
memory starts zooming up at 10%, other times at 30%, but the result is always
the same:  I have not been able to finish encoding any file as my system runs
out of memory (2 GB of RAM).

Is there something wrong with my usage?  How can I work around this?