[MPlayer-users] trying to convert MJPEG

[Joey Parrish]

On 4/16/07, Steve Kleene <skmpl at syrano.acb.uc.edu> wrote:
> 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.

I find that -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -of avi -ffourcc divx works well.
In my experience, lots of WMP are capable of downloading a
DIVX-compatible codec when the need one.

--Joey