[MPlayer-dev-eng] Mencoder skips every other frame...

[Nicholas]

Hi everyone,

I recently rented the "Ed Gein" DVD.  It plays in fine mplayer, but not 
gmplayer, which produces a gray box where the top half shows shows the 
vertically crushed movie, but only in long bursts.  This is a clue that 
interlacing has something to do with it. In mplayer, the VOB and DVD won't 
decode with the ffmpeg12 codec, so it defaults to libmpeg2 where it works.
But this isn't the worst problem.


Here comes the encoding...

(1) I encoded the first 30 seconds using 3-pass mencoder with "-endpos 30" 
option
 
(2) Mencoder skips every other frame

(3) Video rate is therefore twice that of the audio stream, messing up sync

(3) End file is 15 seconds, 1/2 of the 30 that I entered

(4) File size prediction is 350, which is half of the ideal 700MB size

I've tried every command line option I could find.  I have a hunch the problem 
is right in the beginning of the encoding process and has to do with 
interlacing.  For example, I tried 3-pass encoding it where I used the 
"-noskip" option for the 2nd and 3rd passes.  It worked partially -- half the 
frames were still missing, but the remaining ones must have been duplicated 
or played to keep sync with the audio stream.  Nonetheless, it was garbage 
quality.  But a one/two pass encoding with "-noskip" gives me a "Too many 
video packets in the buffer" error after about 17 seconds.  

If anyone has some insight into this problem, I'd be glad to listen!

Thanks,

Nick