[MEncoder-users] Broken AVIs???

[Emery Guevremont]

Hello everyone,

I'm having a problem converting mpeg2 files to mpeg4 (xvid and divx). 
For some unknown reason when the output AVI is bigger then 1 GB (well 
around that size), my dvd player (a Philips-dvp5960 mpeg4 capable) and 
my archos 605 player (4GB model) won't play the AVI pass the the 2h and 
15min mark (which is usually when the file being played goes pass the 
1GB mark). But both device won't stop at the same point.

On my Philips DVD player, my avi will stop working if I fast forward or 
rewind my video pass the 1h45min (not exact time, it varies) mark. If I 
rewind before 1h45min, the video plays as normal. What I mean by stop 
working is that the audio goes out of sync, but completly out of sync. 
The video will play as usual, but the audio being played is the one from 
the being of the movie. So you can say the audio is out of sync by 1hr 
and 45 min. If I fast forward pass the 2h15min, the dvd player freezes.

As for the Archos, the symptons are different. For example if I have a 3 
hr long movie that's about 1.5 GB in size, my archos will only play 
2h15min of the movie and thats it, movie over. At the begin of the 
movie, my archos will display the movie length to be 3hrs, but as soon 
as I fast forward or rewind, it will refresh the movie length to around 
2h15min.

BTW I have no problem playing the movies or videos with my computer 
(Windows media player). At this point I have no idea what could be 
causing the problem and even less, what tools I can use to debug or 
verify my avi files. So far the only tools I've used are gspot and the 
command "file" in linux. Besides that, I've also used another encoder to 
convert my mpeg2 (www.pocketdivxencoder.net) and had no problem playing 
file well over 1 GB. So the problem seems to only be with mencoder.

Here's my system:

Gentoo
Kernel  2.6.23-gentoo-r3
ffmpeg-0.4.9_p20070616
mplayer-1.0_rc2_p25993
xvid-1.1.3

MEncoder dev-SVN-rUNKNOWN-4.1.2 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1700+ (Family: 6, Model: 6, Stepping: 2)
CPUflags: Type: 6 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.


Here are the 2 different commands I use for re-encoding my videos:

#!/bin/bash

MENCODER=/usr/bin/mencoder
DEST=/mnt/extra/store/avi/

$MENCODER -passlogfile $1.log -quiet $1 -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid 
-xvidencopts 
pass=1:autoaspect:noqpel:nogmc:turbo:max_bframes=1:trellis:vhq=4:chroma_me:chroma_opt:hq_ac:bvhq=1 
-vf kerndeint,scale=640:480 -o /dev/null
$MENCODER -passlogfile $1.log -quiet $1 -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid 
-xvidencopts 
pass=2:bitrate=920:autoaspect:noqpel:nogmc:turbo:max_bframes=1:trellis:vhq=4:chroma_me:chroma_opt:hq_ac:bvhq=1 
-vf kerndeint,scale=640:480 -o $1.avi

OR

#!/bin/bash

MENCODER=/usr/bin/mencoder
DEST=/mnt/extra/store/avi/

$MENCODER -passlogfile $1.log -quiet $1 -ovc lavc -ffourcc DX50 
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:turbo:mbd=2:trell:autoaspect:vbitrate=920:vpass=1 
-oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -vf pp=fd,scale=640:480 -o /dev/null;
$MENCODER -passlogfile $1.log -quiet $1 -ovc lavc -ffourcc DX50 
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:turbo:mbd=2:trell:autoaspect:vbitrate=920:vpass=2 
-oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -vf pp=fd,scale=640:480 -o $1.avi