[MEncoder-users] Preview while encoding

[Levente Novák]

On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 11:27 +0200, SZABO Zsolt wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Jun 2008, Levente Novák wrote:
> 
> >> No, but you can just play the file mencoder is writing, at any time.
> >
> > E.g.:
> >
> > mencoder -your_options_here -o file.avi
> >
> > then
> >
> > tail -f file.avi | mplayer -
> 
> Hmm, cool... and what options do you suggest for mplayer not to produce 
> too much load (and to prevent mencoder producing too many skipped frames)? 
> Because ecoding from capture card needs real time processing...
> 

Nothing unfortunately -- I wasn't able to decrease reliably the system
load under 80% with a Celeron D 3.06GHz + 512 MiB RAM when using
software compression and DV as output format even without on-line
display of the result. Now it is different since I bought a hardware
compression card (Hauppauge PVR-150MCE), which has only a minimal impact
on system load.

By the way, irrespectively of the display method used (either with
tail/mplayer as described above or directly with mencoder if it had an
option to show you the output parallel to the encoding task) this
represents an extra load. So if this latter is already high enough, the
only way to encode without too much dropped frames is to shut down all
unneeded applications, daemons, and also not to display the output of
your encode (except of course if you are using a hardware encoder card).

Levente