[MPlayer-users] using mencoder to extract audio

[The Wanderer]

bwnospam-sf1 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Every time this has come up in the past it has been dismissed with
> the suggestion to "use mplayer -dumpaudio".
> 
> "mplayer -dumpaudio" is a poor solution because it has to play the
> entire selection and takes a lot more time than if you extracted it
> with mencoder.

If you want to transcode the audio, rather than duplicating it exactly,
then 'mplayer -ao pcm -vo null -vc dummy' is very fast and gives you a
WAV file you can then pass to a separate audio encoder. (If you don't
want to transcode it, then you may be out of luck - but your example
snipped below attempted to transcode the audio, so...)

> Before I set out to patch mencoder to properly handle the example
> below, can someone who is more familiar with mencoder's options tell
> me if there is another way to do this with the existing options?

There is not, and (unless my understanding of the design goals of
MEncoder is significantly flawed) I seriously doubt that a patch to make
it possible would be accepted. The reasons are below.

> It would seem to me that -novideo is dysfunctional in mencoder.  When
> used it would ideally cause mencoder to no look for the video stream
> and use an output container other than .avi  (mp3 perhaps)

MEncoder is not an audio encoder, it's a video encoder. Audio encoding
is secondary, and provided only because people rarely want to encode
video without accompanying audio. You cannot use MEncoder to encode
audio without video; 'mencoder -novideo' is nonsense.

Or, as the output from MEncoder puts it if the input file does not
contain a video stream: "Video stream is mandatory!"

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

A government exists to serve its citizens, not to control them.