[MPlayer-users] trying to convert MJPEG

[Steve Kleene]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:35:08 +0000 (UTC), John Brown wrote:

> I was just about to suggest that you read a recent thread on this
> very subject ("portable video format"), only to discover that you
> were the original poster. I take it that you never found the answer?

I actually was successful with that.  I got lots of help here and then did a
stupid brute force test.  As far as I could tell, mencoder has available 6
audio codecs (including copy), 30 video codecs (including those in
libavcodecs), and 14 container formats (including those in libavformat).  I
ran a simple command line from a DVD track for each of the 2520 permutations
and tested every one first with mplayer.  Obviously some of the permutations
were doomed from the start.  369 of them were OK in mplayer.  I then tested
those in Windows Movie Maker on 3 XP machines.  When I was done, 17 of them
worked on all 3 XP machines.  (I also tested Media Player and Power Point
just for the heck of it.)

Ultimately I settled on this:

mencoder dvd://1 -oac twolame \
  -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:vbitrate=4000:mbd=2:trell \
  -of lavf -lavfopts format=mpg:i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames \
  -o output.mpg

and have been messing with cropping, scaling and vbitrate since then.

> -of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg1

I tested a few permutations of this general form:

mencoder dvd://1 -oac [whatever] \
  -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video -of mpeg -o test282.mpeg

and none of them even played well with mplayer.  I didn't try the mpegopts
route.

> I suppose that your relatives would have to install an MPEG-2 codec to view
> your Movie Maker file.

That would make it easy, but I think it's too much to hope for.  As I said,
I have the DVD-to-MPEG1 working fine.  The video-camera file also plays fine.
I was hoping to make it smaller with smarter encoding, and that's the only
part where I've failed so far.

Thanks again.