[MEncoder-users] WMV problems

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 12:57:42PM -0500, Nicolas Hesler wrote:
> So it's not only broken when using lavf?.... but always broken??

More or less. Thankfully with the default options (avi muxer, default
value for -mc, and not including -noskip on the command line) the
output is "mostly" correct. Often you'll have points of choppiness
where some frames are lost or duplicated for no good reason, but no
massive a/v sync. If you tweak these options to try to eliminate the
minor issues, you're likely to run into much more major problems due
to the brokenness at the core.

BTW one area where mencoder still shines is inverse telecine,
especially on animated content. The minor blips, statistically
speaking anyway, will occur at points where they don't make a
difference to the output quality.

> Shouldn't there therefore be a HUGE asterisk in the docs somewhere??? Or 

I wouldn't be opposed to it. :)

> some kind of list of things you can do in Mencoder that can't be 
> accomplished otherwise with ffmpeg?  (ie dvd compliant streams) Why 
> bother having docs on how to encode quicktime compatible h264 if ffmpeg 
> can do a better job of it?

Many people are lazy and need lots of filtering, e.g. they might be
going straight from DVD to QT-compatible h264, and then it's a lot
more work to deal with two tools and temporary files or piping between
them. But if all you need is reencoding (and maybe some minor scaling
or whatnot) just use ffmpeg and be happy.

Rich