[MPlayer-users] (help) mencoder fails: FATAL: Cannot initialize video driver

[Jeff Clagg]

Apparently, the answer to your question is that you need to run a 1st
pass before you can run a 2nd pass.

I also have some ideas to offer that don't have anything to do with your
question, but the information might be useful.

On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 10:17:58PM -0500, Christopher J. Bottaro wrote:
> I'm simply trying to encode one of my DVDs to play on my iAudio X5.  It
> fails saying that it can't initialize the video driver.  Why does it need
> to initialize the video driver, I'm not trying to watch the movie, just
> encode it in XVID.

You're not using XviD to encode here, you're using libavcodec's mpeg4
encoder. Just an FYI, not something you need to change.

> [cjb at mobile ~]$ mencoder dvd://1 -o OUT.avi -oac mp3lame -lameopts
> mode=2:cbr:br=96:vol=0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts
> vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=100:vhq:vpass=2 -ffourcc XVID -vf scale=160:128 -ofps
> 14.985

"vhq" is not a useful option; use mbd=0 for fast encoding and mbd=2 for
higher quality. Also see
http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-dvd-mpeg4.html#menc-feat-dvd-mpeg4-lavc-encoding-options
for other useful suggestions.