[MEncoder-users] Most recent svn builds produce bad H264 mp4 files for iPod?

[Flint Million]

Hello,

I'm using mplayer on win32, with the builds provided by the site that
offers various svn builds.

As of late, the SVN builds are producing invalid mp4 files using h264
for playback on my iPod.

Here is the commandline I use for encoding:

mencoder -vf crop=(desired crop),scale=(desired size),dsize=(desired
size) -af volnorm,resample=44100:0:2 -oac faac -ovc x264 -x264encopts
bitrate=(bitrate):vbv_maxrate=(bitrate):vbv_bufsize=2000:nocabac:threads=2:global_header:level_idc=30:me=umh
-faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:br=128:raw -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o
(output) -ofps (fps) (source)

(I have a script that replaces the things in parenthesies as necessary.)

I have an old Mencoder SVN build that works just fine:
MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r29312-4.5.0 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team

But current build downloaded:
MEncoder SVN-r31372-4.2.5 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
produces mp4 files that do not play properly. They appear to have a
color distortion or in some cases even just show random color blocks
moving about the output!

I'm not too familiar with all of the various versions, patches and all
that, especially for win32, so if anyone can shed some light on this,
it'd be greatly appreciated! I'm even willing to try compiling my own
version - I'm very familiar with compiling software on Linux, but I've
never done it on Windows/MinGW, so a tutorial would be very helpful!

(This is an Intel dual-core system, by the way, so I am getting the p4
mt build - but I've tried the non mt builds with the same result.)

Thank you.

FM