[MEncoder-users] Status with MEncoder muxrate problem?

[Francois Visagie]

Hi All,

For my use MEncoder is a fantastic utility and I've invested literally
months setting up the perfect encode for DV AVI to DVD-compliant MPEG-2.

The problem is, when it comes to encoding actual full-length projects it
regularly bombs out with buffer underflow messages such as:

BUFFER UNDEFLOW at stream 0, raising muxrate to 11088 kb/s

The command line I use contains DVD-compliant bitrate and other
specifications:

mencoder -field-dominance 1 -mc 0 -vf hqdn3d=2:1:2,harddup -oac lavc -ovc
lavc -lavcopts
abitrate=128:acodec=ac3:autoaspect:ilme:ildct:keyint=15:mbd=2:top=0:trell:vbitrate=%BITRATE%:vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vstrict=0%PSNR%:vmax_b_frames=2%VB_STRAT%:dia=2:preme=2:predia=2:mbcmp=6:precmp=2:cmp=2:subcmp=6:last_pred=2:mv0:mv0_threshold=0
-of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf %1 -o %OUTPUT% >%OUTPUT%.%PASS%.txt
This problem seems widely reported on the Internet but I haven't found any
solutions to it. All versions of MEncoder I've tried so far have the problem
with slight variations in behaviour.

1) To your knowledge has this problem been fixed and if so, in what
release/SVN?

2) The problem seems to be with the _muxrate_. After encoding, I split the
video and audio into elementary streams for DVD authoring, where only the
video and audio bitrates matter. So personally I don't really care what
muxrate _MEncoder_ uses. What would be a sensible way of determining what
muxrate to specify to avoid this problem? Keeping in mind video and audio
streams need to remain DVD-compliant.

Many thanks in advance,
Francois