[MPlayer-cygwin] RE: Mencoder problems

[compn]

>I appologize, but it's hard to find info on how to use mencoder, so I
>wonder if you can tell me what I might be doing wrong and how I can use it.

check the mplayer html docs? lots of encoding samples in there

>First I tried using this line:
>mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy t.tp t.avi

that just copies the mpeg video stream into an avi container, not good!!!

>Anyway, I then tried this: mencoder -oac copy -ovc xvid t.tp t.avi
>That didn't work so well.  Mencoder crashed after giving me the
>following.  What do I do?

mencoder didnt crash, it exited with an error, an error that tells you what
to do!

>xvid: you must specify one or a valid combination of 'bitrate', 'pass',
>'quantizer' settings

^^right here is the error mencoder reports, you have to specify the bitrate
maybe mencoder should set a default bitrate of 1000 for -ovc xvid, but youd
have to bug diego about this... also 2pass encoding will get better quality results.

mencoder file.tp -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1150 -vf scale=640:480 -o file.avi

good luck, and you might want to try an mencoder frontend on the related projects
page of mplayerhq.hu to get started :)