[MPlayer-users] mplayer and theora?

[Bradley Alexander]

On Friday 24 February 2006 18:43, Jeff Clagg wrote:

> OK, here's what's "new." vhq is not recommended. Roughly, use mbd=0 if
> you like fast, and mbd=2 for high quality. vqmin=2 is the default, and
> I'm pretty sure it always was, so not sure why it's even in there. I
> find lumi/dark masking dubious (especially dark_mask), but perhaps this
> is taste, and may depend on the screen. For more quick ideas, see
> http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-enc-libavcodec.html#menc-feat-dv
>d-mpeg4-lavc-encoding-options

Thank you. I wound up cobbling together a bunch of stuff I had found online.

> Also, -vf and -vop are for the same purpose, only -vop has really
> annoying syntax and so is deprecated. A more modern approach would be "-vf
> pp=fd,scale=640:480".  (I'm curious where you got that command line from.)

I wrote t his script before -vf existed. I found that I preferred the larger 
size, and it took less resources to create it on my postprocess machine than 
the workstation that has the capture card...But when I tried to get the scale 
and the pp in the same syntax, it would not work. This was the best 
compromise I could find at the time.

> > I also have a Sharp Zaurus, which runs MPlayer 1.0pre7. Being space
> > constrained, I have been working to convert some videos to ogg theora
> > for playback on the Zaurus. The script I wrote for it strips the sound
> > to a wav, downsamples to 24000Hz and resizes the video to 320x240 with
> > no sound, converts the wav to ogg and recombines them. It seems to work
> > with .wmvs I download from the internet, but not with avi format --
> > either ones I recorded from the tv capture card or downloads from the
> > Internet.
>
> This'll probably sound pedantic, and it doesn't directly answer anything
> you asked, but here goes. Ogg is a (dumb) container format. Vorbis is
> the name of the (genuinely quite good) audio codec that is incestuously
> linked with Ogg. Mplayer 1.0pre7 doesn't believe in vorbis-in-avi, but
> I believe there is a particular way of doing this in more recent
> mplayers; if my belief is right, though, you can't expect any other
> player to ever play it IMO. Most people will probably just tell you that
> vorbis-in-avi is impossible. It may be possible, but this doesn't
> necessarily mean it's a good idea...

Agreed. That said, let me see if I can articulate my understanding of the 
situation.  I thought that I was converting the DivX (or xvid) fideo to 
theora. However, in checking a few files, I find this not to be the case. I 
thought a .ogm was equal to theora, which was a video format (I didn't really 
consider the specifics) with the audio being ogg vorbis instead of mp3. 

The thing I still find confusing is the fact that I created a video using the 
same script for the Zaurus from a .wmv, and it worked, audio and all...But 
the ones that I created from avis do not.

> I don't know why Theora is in the subject line, but if you really care
> about space efficiency, you're way better off sticking with lavc's
> mpeg4. Theora is the name of a video codec from the Xiph people, and is
> in turn very close to On2's VP3. A few people people believe that Theora
> is hugely overhyped. In any case it's probably not worth looking into
> for what you're doing.

When I played back videos I left as divx, I ended up having problems with the 
videos at the time. Of course, this was a while back, shortly after getting 
the Z. I will try it again and report back.

> Hope this answered at least a few of your questions. I know I answered
> some you didn't ask. Sorry.
Actually, you wewre very helpful and informative, and gave me something to 
think about. I thank you.

-- 
--Brad
========================================================================
Bradley M. Alexander                       |
IA Analyst, SysAdmin, Security Engineer    |   storm [at] tux.org
Debian/GNU Linux Developer                 |   storm [at] debian.org
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