[MPlayer-users] Mencoder output formats?

[Corey Hickey]

Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Hello,
> 
> How do I make mencoder output to formats other than AVI?
> I tried to use something like:
>    mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=rv10 -o test.rm
> 
> and the test.rm is a AVI
> 
MEncoder only outputs to AVI.

> And, there is a way to make mencoder output to stdout?
> 
> And, what is the best format to use when streaming? With AVI u can't
> seek. I need one that isn't too CPU intensive.
> 
Someone else will have to answer this one for you...

> I'm asking these questions 'cause I'm trying to make a "Security Camera
> Recorder" to my father. It will use a Athlon XP 1800+ w/ 4 v4l cards
> and I want to record the video locally and stream it over the net, so I
> could see them at home. By now I'm using ffmpeg to record the movies
> and ffserver to stream them and mplayer to play them remotely. I really
> want  to use MEncoder to at least capture the image so I can use the
> -vop crop to eliminate those border noise and the -vop bmovl so I can
> record the time to each frame (that why the output to stdout, if I can
> do that I can output to ffmpeg and make it record)
> 
> Any ideas on this topic are welcome!
> When I have things working I'm thinking in opening a sf project.
> 
> Gustavo

You might be able to get this working well with a named pipe:

$ mkfifo video.pipe
$ mencoder -sourcefile-and-all-your-options -o video.pipe

...and then set your ffmpeg server to read from video.pipe.

This URL describes something similar:
http://www.rmatsumoto.org/camera/dc1394-ohphone.html

-Corey