Index: DOCS/xml/en/encoding-guide.xml
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--- DOCS/xml/en/encoding-guide.xml (revision 20416)
+++ DOCS/xml/en/encoding-guide.xml (working copy)
@@ -4123,7 +4123,295 @@
+
+Using <application>MEncoder</application> to create
+<application>QuickTime</application>-compatible files
+
+<application>QuickTime</application> 7 limitations
+
+
+ QuickTime 7 supports H.264 video and AAC audio,
+ but it does not support the AVI container format. However, you can use
+ MEncoder to encode the video and audio, and then
+ use an external program such as mp4creator (part
+ of the MPEG4IP suite)
+ to remux the video and audio tracks into an MP4 container.
+
+
+
+ QuickTime's support for H.264 is limited,
+ so you will need to forgo some advanced features.
+ If you encode your video with features that
+ QuickTime 7 does not support,
+ QuickTime-based players will show you a pretty
+ white screen instead of your expected video.
+
+
+
+
+ B-frames:
+ QuickTime 7 supports a maximum of 1 B-frame, i.e.
+ . This means that
+ and will have no
+ effect, since they require to be greater than 1.
+
+
+ Macroblocks:
+ QuickTime 7 does not support 8x8 DCT macroblocks.
+ This option () is off by default, so just be sure
+ not to explicitly enable it. This also means that the
+ option will have no effect, since it requires .
+
+
+ Aspect ratio:
+ QuickTime 7 does not support SAR (sample
+ aspect ratio) information in MPEG-4 files; it assumes that SAR=1. Read
+ the section on scaling
+ for a workaround.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Cropping
+
+ Suppose you want to rip your freshly bought copy of "The Chronicles of
+ Narnia" and add it to your local video collection, hosted on your local
+ web server running Gallery2. Unfortunately, your wife is still using an
+ Apple PowerBook, so your rip will need to be
+ QuickTime-compatible. Your DVD is region 1,
+ which means it is NTSC. The example below would still apply to PAL,
+ except you would omit and use slightly
+ different and dimensions.
+
+
+
+ After running , you follow the process
+ detailed in the section How to deal
+ with telecine and interlacing in NTSC DVDs and discover that it is
+ 24000/1001 fps progressive video. This simplifies the process somewhat,
+ since you do not need to use an inverse telecine filter such as
+ or a deinterlacing filter such as
+ .
+
+
+
+ Next, you need to crop out the black bars from the top and bottom of the
+ video, so you use the filter:
+
+ mplayer dvd://1 -vf cropdetect
+
+ Make sure you seek to a fully filled frame (past the opening credits and
+ logos), and you will see the crop rectangle in
+ MPlayer's console output:
+
+ crop area: X: 0..719 Y: 61..413 (-vf crop=720:352:0:62)
+
+ Play the movie back with this filter to make sure it looks good:
+
+ mplayer dvd://1 -vf crop=720:352:0:62
+
+
+
+
+
+Scaling
+
+
+ The next step is truly heartbreaking.
+ QuickTime 7 does not support MPEG-4 videos
+ with a sample aspect ratio other than 1, so you will need to scale
+ the video to square pixels. This wastes a lot of disk space, but it
+ simply can not be avoided if you want your video to be playable by
+ QuickTime 7.
+ MEncoder can apply the appropriate scaling
+ by specifying . This will scale your
+ video to the correct width for the cropped height, rounded to a multiple
+ of 16 for optimal compression. Remember that if you are cropping, you
+ should crop first, then scale:
+
+ -vf crop=720:352:0:62,scale=-10:-1
+
+
+
+
+
+A/V sync
+
+
+ Because you will be remuxing into a different container, you should
+ always use the option to ensure that duplicated
+ frames are actually duplicated in the video output. Without this option,
+ MEncoder will simply put a marker in the video
+ stream that a frame was duplicated, and rely on the client software to
+ show the same frame twice. Unfortunately, this "soft duplication" does
+ not survive remuxing, so the audio will slowly lose sync with the video.
+
+
+
+ The final filter chain looks like this:
+
+ -vf crop=720:352:0:62,scale=-10:-1,harddup
+
+
+
+
+
+Bitrate
+
+
+ As always, the selection of bitrate is a matter of taste. This movie
+ has a fair bit of action and lots of detail, but H.264 video looks
+ good at much lower bitrates than XviD or other MPEG-4 codecs. After
+ much experimentation, I chose to encode this movie at 900kbps. Yes,
+ you read that correctly: 900kbps. My wife thought the result looked
+ phenomenal on her PowerBook's screen. Your wife may have different
+ standards; adjust your bitrate accordingly.
+
+
+
+
+
+Encoding example
+
+
+ You are now ready to encode the video. Since you care about
+ quality, of course you will be doing a two-pass encode. To shave off
+ some encoding time, you can specify the option
+ on the first pass; this reduces and
+ to 1. To save some disk space, you can
+ use the option to strip off the first few seconds
+ of the video. (I found that this particular movie has 32 seconds of
+ credits and logos.) can be 0 or 1.
+ The other options are documented in Encoding with
+ the x264 codec and
+ the man page.
+
+ mencoder dvd://1 -o /dev/null -ss 32 -ovc x264 \
+-x264encopts pass=1:turbo:bitrate=900:bframes=1:\
+me=umh:4x4mv:trellis=1:qp_step=4:qcomp=0.7:direct_pred=3:keyint=300 \
+-vf crop=720:352:0:62,scale=-10:-1,harddup \
+-oac faac -faacopts br=192:mpeg=4:object=1 -channels 2 -srate 48000 \
+-ofps 24000/1001
+
+ I have a dual-processor machine, so I usually add
+ . This increases encoding speed by 20-30%,
+ but it can result in slightly larger files.
+
+
+
+ The second pass is the same, except that you specify the output file
+ and set .
+
+ mencoder dvd://1 -o narnia.avi -ss 32 -ovc x264 \
+-x264encopts pass=2:turbo:bitrate=900:frameref=5:bframes=1:\
+me=umh:4x4mv:trellis=1:qp_step=4:qcomp=0.7:direct_pred=3:keyint=300 \
+-vf crop=720:352:0:62,scale=-10:-1,harddup \
+-oac faac -faacopts br=192:mpeg=4:object=1 -channels 2 -srate 48000 \
+-ofps 24000/1001
+
+
+
+ The resulting AVI should play perfectly in
+ MPlayer, but of course
+ QuickTime can not play it because it does
+ not support AVI files. So the next step is to remux the video into
+ an MP4 container.
+
+
+
+
+Remuxing as MP4
+
+
+ There are several ways to remux AVI files to MP4. I prefer
+ mp4creator, which is part of the
+ MPEG4IP suite.
+
+
+
+ First, demux the AVI into separate audio and video streams using
+ MPlayer.
+
+ mplayer narnia.avi -dumpaudio -dumpfile narnia.aac
+mplayer narnia.avi -dumpvideo -dumpfile narnia.h264
+
+ The filenames are important; mp4creator
+ requires that AAC audio streams be named .aac
+ and H.264 video streams be named .h264.
+
+
+
+ Now use mp4creator to create a new
+ MP4 file out of the audio and video streams.
+
+ mp4creator -create=narnia.aac narnia.mp4
+mp4creator -create=narnia.h264 -rate=23.976 narnia.mp4
+
+ Unlike the encoding step, you must specify the framerate as a
+ decimal (such as 23.976), not a fraction (such as 24000/1001).
+
+
+
+ This narnia.mp4 file should now be playable
+ with any QuickTime 7 application, such as
+ QuickTime Player or
+ iTunes. If you are planning to view the
+ video in a web browser with the QuickTime
+ plugin, you should also hint the movie so that the
+ QuickTime plugin can start playing it
+ while it is still downloading. mp4creator
+ can create these hint tracks:
+
+ mp4creator -hint=1 narnia.mp4
+mp4creator -hint=2 narnia.mp4
+mp4creator -optimize narnia.mp4
+
+ You can check the final result to ensure that the hint tracks were
+ created successfully:
+
+ mp4creator -list narnia.mp4
+
+ You should see a list of tracks: 1 audio, 1 video, and 2 hint tracks.
+
+Track Type Info
+1 audio MPEG-4 AAC LC, 8548.714 secs, 190 kbps, 48000 Hz
+2 video H264 Main@5.1, 8549.132 secs, 899 kbps, 848x352 @ 23.976001 fps
+3 hint Payload mpeg4-generic for track 1
+4 hint Payload H264 for track 2
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Adding metadata tags
+
+
+ If you want to add tags to your video that show up in iTunes, you can use
+ AtomicParsley.
+
+ AtomicParsley narnia.mp4 --metaEnema --title "The Chronicles of Narnia" --year 2005 --stik Movie --freefree --overWrite
+
+ The option removes any existing metadata
+ (mp4creator inserts its name in the
+ "encoding tool" tag), and reclaims the
+ space from the deleted metadata.
+ The option sets the type of video (such as Movie
+ or TV Show), which iTunes uses to group related video files.
+ The option overwrites the original file;
+ without it, AtomicParsley creates a new
+ auto-named file in the same directory and leaves the original file
+ untouched.
+
+
+
+
+
+
Using MEncoder to create VCD/SVCD/DVD-compliant files.