[MEncoder-users] Adding a silent soundtrack to a video-onlyfile?

[GuyWithDogs]

RC wrote:

> On Wed, 23 May 2007 15:30:25 -0700
> "GuyWithDogs" <guywithdogs at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Is there some way I can coerce mencoder to create a new output file
> > of the  same format as the input file, but with the silence.mp3
> > added as the  "soundtrack" (repeated as many times as necessary to
> > match the length of the  video clip)?
> 
> That's a very strange request.  Why would you want an audio track of
> silence, rather than just no audio?  
> 
> Anyhow, I think you'd be much better off if you just use "-af delay"
> with a large value, plus -audiofile silence.mp3.

For a project I'm working on, for Windows, there's a 3rd-party library
that makes playing video clips "seamlessly" easy. The one critical
"gotcha" is that the clips must all have the same number of streams as
the first clip played. So if the first clip is video only, then any
file can be added, but only the video plays - no audio, if present,
would be rendered. If the first clip has video AND audio, then the
library won't add video only clips to the playlist. For me, that
doesn't work.

So, while I am looking at modifying the library to automatically add a
"silent soundtrack" where needed, a very quick short-term fix would be
to add a silent soundtrack to the the existing clips so that I'm not
worried about clips being rejected because they have only one stream.

Thanks for the pointer to the arguments. I'll give it a shot.