coding a film to divx with mencoder

jmrbcu · 2008-10-24 18:13:51

Hi folks, I need to recode a movie to divx so I can play it with my DVD Player (Philips), I need the recoded movie to have a restricted user defined size (600 Mb for example or 40 Mb for a video clip), good picture quality and can be playable with this dvd, in either a flash or CD. I want to use mencoder for this task, any suggestions?

Ranguvar · 2008-10-24 19:01:36

DivX is a codec, not a format. The format DivX encodes to is MPEG-4 ASP. A F/LOSS MPEG-4 ASP encoder is Xvid, which mencoder can use, and is generally regarded as better than DivX (DivX still has better multi-threading, but Xvid with VAQ can definitely beat it in quality, and can be configured more). Anyways, if you want to use mencoder, read the manual and ask questions here: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=63 and here: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=52

If you want an easy interface, though you will miss a small amount of configuration and I'm not sure if it uses a VAQ or multi-threading enabled Xvid build, try AviDemux.

If you _really_ want quality, Windows is sadly required... or a lot of fooling with Wine/avs2yuv/AvsProxy, in order to make AviSynth (an open source frame-serving and video/audio processing scripting tool) work. AviSynth 3, which is in a state of limbo right now, will use GStreamer and support multiple platforms, but the current AviSynth 2.5x is tied to DirectShow. More info: http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=33 and http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=140376

Last edited by Ranguvar (2008-10-24 19:04:39)

pelle.k · 2008-10-24 19:16:57

Avidemux is awsome, i agree. Too bad i havent done any serious work with it yet though.
You want to do 2-pass encoding, with variable bitrate. If you do 1-pass with locked bitrate, it will work but not be as pretty.
I used vidomi back in the days (windows software).

ChoK · 2008-10-24 22:16:10

Avidemux supports VHQ, limiting the quantizer range, you can set different ones for I P and B frame, you can set a bitrate overhead / underhead for scenes who need it, so everything a MPEG 4 ASP can do, avidemux allows you to set it up (am I wrong?)
Edit : Also if mplayer/mencoder is compiled with multithreading support, avidemux will support it

Of course you have the target bitrate option, Avidemux is aware of the size of your audiofile so he will adjust the options accordingly (you have also a calculator utility)

Warning Avisynth freak speaking wrote:

Only limitations is prefiltering, like ranguvar said there is no avisynth equivalent for windows yet but the casual filters are here
(if you don't know what avisynth is, then avidemux provides all the features you need (most from mplayer and avisynth)
crop, resize (bilinear, lanczos ..), a handful of deinterlacer and inverse teleciners, denoisers ( fluxsmooth, cnr2, temporal cleaner, msmooth ....), some sharpening tools like asharp (mmm I should look for some more filters), and subtitle hardsubbing
Well I love it , well it lacks some filters (derainbow, hybridfupp, limitedsharpen, FFT3D-GPU for those I miss the most but well)

Last edited by ChoK (2008-10-25 01:46:20)

Ranguvar · 2008-10-28 02:03:38

Yeah, no FFT3DGPU is a damn shame... Since it doesn't even work through avs2yuv/avsproxy

My 9600GT beats the living hell out of my quad-core, easily four times as fast. GPUs were made for the FFT. AND, that frees up the quad for the actual encode. Sigh. Someone needs to port FFT3DGPU to OpenGL, but I have no knowledge of how to do so (yet)...

The whole of AviSynth needs to be moved off the ancient DirectShow/VfW to GStreamer ASAP. I think it'd really boost interest in GStreamer, too.

If AviSynth 3 is still vaporware when I have the coding skills necessary to work on it, and I do plan on getting that, I will do my best to help.

rsambuca · 2008-10-28 02:20:52

Pardon me for interrupting/hijacking, but I was wondering how ffmpeg compares in all of this. I have been using ffmpeg to transcode a bunch of mpeg2 videos from my Hauppauge capture card into xvid/avi. I know very little, other than the settings I have been fiddling with work for making Xvids that play on both my XBox360 and my Archos media player. Is ffmpeg any better or worse than mencoder? The documentation for video transcoding seems to be either lacking, or beyond the understanding of a layperson.

Ranguvar · 2008-10-28 02:45:32

ffmpeg and mencoder, I _think_ both use the installed xvidcore. Since Arch's xvidcore package is the vanilla 1.1.3, I highly recommend getting the latest CVS of 1.2*, adding Dark Shikari's VAQ patch (replaces Lumi Masking): http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=135093

This will net you multithreading, better VAQ (with VAQ, it is advisable to use the H.263 matrix for almost everything, as compared to before when the MPEG matrix or custom ones helped with high bitrates), and better trellis. The latter two translating into better quality.

As DS said, though, there were troubles getting VAQ to work with mencoder. Search the thread, I think there might have been a workaround.

Oh, and it's not common knowledge, but avoid Xvid's Chroma Optimization (Chroma motion search is good, optimization is bad). It's bugged quite heavily, and only hurts (slightly).

If you need any help with encoding, PM me here or on Doom9, or post on either

There's tons of documentation on video encoding over at: http://forum.doom9.org/ It takes a bit to learn, but it's worth it.

Oh, and freaky coincidence: I have both an old Hauppauge (WinTV-PVR-150?), an Archos (605 80GB?), and and Xbox 360 O.O
So, yeah... I'm familiar with them xD

skottish · 2008-10-28 03:07:35

rsambuca wrote:

Is ffmpeg any better or worse than mencoder? The documentation for video transcoding seems to be either lacking, or beyond the understanding of a layperson.

Mplayer is built on FFmpeg now. In fact, FFmpeg lives because of the mounting legal problems that Mplayer was coming into. With that being said, FFmpeg has such better syntax than Mencoder in my opinion.

Ranguvar wrote:

ffmpeg and mencoder, I _think_ both use the installed xvidcore

That's true, but neither one of them needs xvidcore. Encoding to mpeg4 and setting the fourcc value in FFmpeg and Mencoder works fine. From http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/faq.html#SEC24

Both Xvid and DivX (version 4+) are implementations of the ISO MPEG-4 standard (note that there are many other coding formats that use this same standard). Thus, use '-vcodec mpeg4' to encode in these formats. The default fourcc stored in an MPEG-4-coded file will be 'FMP4'. If you want a different fourcc, use the '-vtag' option. E.g., '-vtag xvid' will force the fourcc 'xvid' to be stored as the video fourcc rather than the default.

For a long time xvid was faster and higher quality. No more. That hasn't been true for a while.

Last edited by skottish (2008-10-28 03:26:27)

rsambuca · 2008-10-28 20:05:06

Wow, you guys are speaking another language here! I have a lot of reading to do...

Thanks for the doom9 suggestion. I have seen that ages ago, but I obviously didn't explore it thoroughly enough as there is a ton of info there. It should keep me busy for the next decade or two sorting through it. I may take you up on the offer for PM assistance if I need it later!

Oh, and by the way, my Archos is an older 504 model.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-24 18:13:51

coding a film to divx with mencoder

#2 2008-10-24 19:01:36

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#3 2008-10-24 19:16:57

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#4 2008-10-24 22:16:10

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#5 2008-10-28 02:03:38

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#6 2008-10-28 02:20:52

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#7 2008-10-28 02:45:32

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#8 2008-10-28 03:07:35

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

#9 2008-10-28 20:05:06

Re: coding a film to divx with mencoder

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