What is Reddit's opinion of
MEncoder?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
42 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
I get by fine with <code>mplayer</code> or, when I need playlists and remote control, <code>mpd</code>. It's particularly nice that mpd doesn't lock you in to one broken GUI frontend. You have literally dozens of broken frontends to choose from ;)
This reminds me of the time MPlayer's code was used.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news-archive.html
>Basically KiSS Technology is specialized in particular kinds of media hardware, namely DVD and MPEG-4 players, set-top-boxes, and such.
>There is nothing wrong with that.
>However, if a careless user initiates a string search in one of their firmwares:
$ strings KiSS_DP-508_FW2.7.4_PAL.iso | grep -A 3 -B 6 MPSub Microdvd Subrip Subviewer Sami Vplayer Unknown MPSub Subviewer 2.0 Subrip 0.9 Jacosub
> From what I understand these terminals are quite dumb
Depends if you're using a text mode or the Linux framebuffer. The framebuffer is fully graphical, which means you can view images and play videos.
>Are Bi-predicted frames created in the two-pass process?
Yes.
>I was under the impress that you could have I,B, and P frames in one pass.
>That the second pass is to refine the spatial compression of the I and B frames.
That's how I undertstand it. Hence why you get diminishing returns on third, fourth, and fifth passes, to the point where the third pass isn't even worth the time.
>Can anyone confirm one way or the other?
Well, Sorenson says nothing about 2-pass required for B frames. And according to the <code>mplayer</code> documentation they say that, "it is interesting to note that using B-frames usually speeds up the second pass somewhat, and may also speed up a single pass encode if adaptive B-frame decision is turned off." This implies that B-frames must be possible in a 1-pass encode in order for them to test the second half of that statement, otherwise it wouldn't make a difference what the setting is since it would be disabled anyway.
If you want conclusive evidence why not just run two encode jobs from the same source file? Use CQ/CRF to manage the bitrate, and 1-pass encoding, one with B-frames on, and one with b-frames off. See if there's a difference in file size.
mplayer:
-ss is the start position -endpos is how many seconds you want it to run "Video.mkv" is the video-file name. -vo is video output, format png, z-level = 1, output directory = 2vid -ao null (copy/paste this)
convert (imagemagick):
-crop (unfortunately I'm not familiar with this one, but they have good documentation) +repage (copy/paste) -fuzz (think 'blur' in photoshop) -delay (most likely ms between frames) -loop (0 = infinite loop) 2vid/*.png (use directory 2vid, select all png's inside of it) -layers (takes in a word to optimize, can be used more than once) Almost.gif (name of the output file)
gifsicle:
-03 (not familiar with this program at all, so I don't know) --colors (256 is the number of colors) Almost.gif (input) >Done.gif (output, the > is required)
'man' pages:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html
http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/man.html
http://amath.colorado.edu/computing/software/man/convert.html
That code took the original video clip that those guys provides and encodes it with x264 and lame. Its turned for high quality output, so less compression.
mencoder is/was part of the mplayer project and is a command line tool for video compression. x264 is an open source H.264 encoder, which is probably a, if not the most, popular video codec in use right now, and lame is an open source mp3 encoder. The end result is a video clip that is smaller than those guy's provided "miracle" clip using nothing but the more popular tools in use right now.
He didn't test to see what codec was used, but to see if the claim itself is actually a miraculous by trying to hit it himself.
The x264encopts are to tune the output quality. Those are arguments to tune the video encoding. Documentation on the settings can be found here.
Oh.. Well they have lots of image->ascii filters. Mplayer (and many others) can apply a filter to render any video back in ASCII characters. I'm sure you can apply the same concept to an emulator since many already have visual enhancement plugins.
According to the mplayer slave docs you want pt_step <value> (where value is the distance in the playlist to skip, and the sign is the direction).
I use mplayer, http://www.mplayerhq.hu somehow thats one thing that I install always on my system since I use linux.
I use the package from packman: http://packman.links2linux.org/package/mplayer
Its not the most "modern" linux software, but it works and also has a nice command line interface.
1 is multi-pass VBR and long keyframe distances. #2 A good "Hollywood" compressionist pre-processes the image in several ways (such as noise reduction passes) that optimise the footage for compression while trying to affect the picture as little as possible. The pirates are starting from a well prepped source. #3 The quality of your encoder. Some encoders are noticably better than others and vice versa depending on the bit rate you are comparing them at. #4 Consider that the less movement and less detail in your video, the better the encoded quality, for example, a deep depth of field shot with a shaky camera will require much higher bit rates to maintain quality than the same shot with shallow DOF shot from a dolly. Same goes for noise (visible or not). #5 check this out, it's written for DIVX but the basics are the same: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-dvd-mpeg4.html
Sorry, I've only ever done this on linux. However, a quick google search seems to indicate that there is a windows and a mac port of mplayer, so perhaps you could try one of those.
I'm not much of a Mac person, but it seems you can install both above-mentioned tools under Mac:
GPhoto2:
http://blog.dcclark.net/2009/05/how-to-gphoto-primer.html
mencoder (see the "Binaries" download section):
I suggest reading the mencoder guide as much as you can stand it.
Handbrake abstracts much of this away through presets, but still allows a fair amount of tweaking. Understanding these fundamentals will help you understand how and why you should tweak what.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html
Somewhere in there are instructions on how to do what I described. And to script it all together, create a .bat (for Windows) or a .sh (for Linux or OSX).
And yes, it is automatic, assuming you always run the script and are A. Willing to enter in a seek-time for each episode or B. Willing to use the same time for each episode but miss a portion of each episode in the process.
> Has anyone else been having lots of issues with youtube taking awhile to play
If I care about a video, I just save it from youtube and watch it with my favorite media player, MPlayer. The user interface of any flash (or non-flash) video player compares infavorably to the flexible keyboard commands of MPlayer.
i'm kind of new to working with video, but i think maybe the problem is caused by duplicate frames being yanked which progressively de-syncs the audio. mencoder has a "harddup" which might help.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html
It's available for windows too, but I find it works better on linux. shrugs My own 2 cents.
Mind though, I'm currently not much on linux, so haven't been able to try it out with mplayer.
I'm afraid that's not a standard EDL file, at least not a post-production one... Bit confusing for them to use that name and extension! It's not going to work in video editing software.
Looks like it's an mPlayer specific format.
At the very least, if you open it the times on the left appear to be seconds and milliseconds, so if you can convert those to timecode you can at least find where your edits need to be.
Otherwise the super-simple but kinda hacky option is to use mPlayer (or a player that can read this format like Kodi) to play the video, and simultaneously screen record it.
How are you digitizing the VHS tapes?
I've been digitizing my VHS collection by using mencoder, which is part of MPlayer. I'm running Linux, and I have a TV tuner card in my computer that is connected to an Insignia DVD/VCR combo unit. I use just a composite video connection. To digitize a VHS I play it in the VCR and on my computer I run this (long) command to create the MPEG file (my_file.mpg):
mencoder -tv norm=ntsc:driver=v4l2:width=720:height=480:input=1:fps=30000/1001 tv:// -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg mpegopts format=dvd -vf pp=lb/ha/va/dr,hqdn3d,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1500:vrc_maxrate=8000:vbitrate=8000:keyint=15:acodec=mp2:abitrate=192:aspect=4/3 -o my_file.mpg
The video and audio quality are great with this method. The nice thing is anyone can do it, with just a plain old VCR and a TV tuner card (I use a Bt878-based tuner).
TBH, I think the best way to share your work is with a simple Edit Decision List (EDL). That way, anyone with a legal copy can just use your EDL to watch your recut version.
If mplayer's edl was a standard (maybe it is?), and those could be streamed with (before?) the file, that would be awesome. I know the original plan was to have user-contributed repositories of edl files, but I can't find any.
With regards to MPlayer, from a quick Google it seems like MPlayer doesn't enable multi-channel playback by default, which may be it's insisting that there are only two channels. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/advaudio-surround.html
By the way, if you want a smaller file size, I'd just extract the DTS core rather than convert to AC3.
Did the music video work as well?
I'd be tempted to try a command line tool. downside is you have to fiddle with a command line, but the upside is when you get the right sort of magical incantation that works, its repeatable.
mencoder has a document on making DVDs http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-vcd-dvd.html
7.2. NTSC DVD8.5.
mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf \ -vf scale=720:480,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 \ -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=18:vstrict=0:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=16/9 -ofps 30000/1001 \ -o movie.mpg movie.avi
The movie.mpg is the output file, and the movie.avi is an example for the input. just rename the input file to something like lol1.mp4 to lessen the hassle.
There is a windows build of mencoder http://mplayerwin.sourceforge.net/
I'm giving that exact command a shot on my end, but I only had a 2 hour mp4 file on hand :-/
Most annoying thing for me with mixer is that it’s based in a browser and confined to it… That’s just bloaty and inefficient compared to watching an extracted streaming source (using streamlink) in vlc or mplayer. For that to work out nicely irc support for the chatting function -- or any open protocol for that matter -- would have been nice as well… So please don’t do it again, or else make them pay a lot more ;;-).
Might I suggest coming up with an original name? mplayer is already a thing, and while it's not as well known as VLC or whatever, it's still a well established claimant to the name
> I just use kodi cuz it points right to my files i dont want to have to constantly move them around.
I don't understand what you are saying here.
- Are you saying that you have file in multiple paths within the file system,that you don't know where all the files are located and kodi finds them for you and "links" them all together so that you can find them easily?
- Or are you saying that you have to move files from one location to another to make different media players and kodi work correctly.
> And do u mean mcplayer?
No I mean mplayer.
Definitely a scam. There's a legit media player called Mplayer but it's out of favor and mostly used on linux. They use a different logo as well, of course.
Here's how I do it.
You may need to install mencoder and some relevant audio/video codecs. I'm not using anything not in standard Ubuntu 14.04 repos.
This first command will give you mp3 audio and xvid. It will create an English language subs file. Change the threads parameter to match the number of logical cores you have. Change the language parameter as appropriate.
mencoder infile.mkv -o outfile.avi -alang en -mc 0 -noskip -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid -vobsubout outfile.srt -xvidencopts bitrate=4500:chroma_opt:quant_type=mpeg:threads=8 -lameopts preset=insane
If you want the original audio stream:
mencoder infile.mkv -o outfile.avi -alang en -mc 0 -noskip -oac copy -ovc xvid -vobsubout outfile.srt -xvidencopts bitrate=4500:chroma_opt:quant_type=mpeg:threads=8
Do a few tests and simply reduce the bitrate in order to reduce the file size.
Mencoder has many options. You might want to experiment with using multiple passes.
VLC uses ffmpeg’s libavcodec library for the most part, plus some external libraries that ffmpeg is commonly linked with as well.
mplayer and forks have a set of own codecs that can be modularly extended, not just using libavcodec or GStreamer, but also Win32 codec DLLs, for example.
> Btw, are you sure about VLC being able to support more formats than mplayer? I've never found anything it couldn't play (that was not corrupted beyond repair or DRM-locked).
Well, they both play pretty much everything I've ever thrown at them, I was basing this off of the supported formats list for each player. (MPlayer and VLC)
> it frustrates me that you apparently have to focus the terminal ncurses window to use keybindings in vlc, in mplayer you don't even need a terminal window open for it to open the perfectly minimalistic and still fully-functional UI
Huh? I can't say I know what you mean, do you mean you can control MPlayer without having it focused? If so, you can do the same in VLC by enabling the DBus interface...
> and the dependencies list fits in 2 lines (even if you just want the curses interface the vlc package still depends on the QT libraries.. mplayer doesn't even need ncurses)
I verified this and you seem to be right. Woah. :o
> For conversion/encoding you can either use mencoder (video editor flavour of mplayer) or just use plain ffmpeg. Different specialized tools the UNIX way.
Point. Again this is subjective, but I've always liked my monolithic tools. The tools that can do everything, and then some.
When it comes to MPEG4 (xvid, mpeg4, h.264), the only thing that matters for file size is bitrate. So get the bitrate down and get the file size down. The trick is balancing the quality you get for the bitrate. x264 will give you better quality than plain mpeg4 or vxid for the same bitrate.
1.Get Mencoder
2.Extract mencoder
3.Use the following command line:
mencoder inputfile.avi -o outputfile.avi -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame
This will give you a pretty plain jane x264 encoded file with decent settings.
Since you mentioned that you were shooting for 30 MB for 3 mins of video, you can also set the bitrate to make sure that you do not exceed your limit. This command line:
mencoder inputfile.avi -o outputfile.avi -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -x264encopts bitrate=1250 -lameopts bitrate=128
produced a file that was 29.2 MB (30,668,720 bytes) according to Windows Explorer.
Here is the online Mencoder Documentation that contains a ton of information.
Hope that helps.
Wow I did not realize the massive amounts of MPlayer installations. From the main website, I was taken here to which, on that page, I downloaded this. But going back to the main site now, I found this page. I have no idea if those downloads are any different than the one I have now and if it was different, I have no idea which one to download. I have a feeling the issue does reside within my actual version, though.
Running the -v argument, I notice it says >File not found: 'mplayer'
>Failed to open mplayer.
There's the issue I assume? Reading the ports for Windows, binaries, sources, etc looks like heiroglyphics to me. Any chance you can point out the latest build? I'm on W7.
If you're desperate, I have two ideas:
Instead of taking photos, make really short videos, then get one frame from each small video. You'll wanna automate this, which should be doable with some scripting and something like mplayer.
Canon EOS utility has remote live-view feature, so instead of taking photos, take screenshots of that window (I hope that OSD stuff can be removed in menus/setting, otherwise this wont work).
Yeah I've mostly used VLC as a player as opposed to a transcoder, so no experience there. MPlayer is probably more geared towards doing that sort of stuff.
>It's when there's a large user base with an itch that programmers can scratch, and that usually means programming tools.
I think with companies like Canonical, we're seeing a lot more non-programmer oriented stuff pop up. I personally really like the idea of commercial companies making open source applications. Everybody benefits, the company isn't the only one responsible for improving the app, testing, and fixing bugs, but they can afford to pay developers to do stuff that isn't fun.
Something like WebKit is a good example of that, Apple, Google, and KDE folks all use it and improve it. MS on the other hand is stuck rolling their own rendering engine, and they're simply never going to have the same amount of resources to devote to it.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/networksync.html seems like it might do what you want. Not something that I've used before though, just found it from Googling.
There's probably a much simpler solution, but it's definitely escaping me at the moment.
> I have never even heard of this. (Maybe you are thinking of Java Swing on tiling WMs?) X11 is all about standards, and you ignore the WMs that are not standard compliant.
It's not really about window managers. It's about the multiple ways to send video to the screen under X11. Look at what mplayer supports, for example. Some of those are non-X11, but several of them (Xv, DGA, OpenGL, and straight X11) are options if you are using X11.
I fully admit I don't know that much about video under Linux, but when I use mplayer to play a movie, in my experience, several of the output options work, but some work better than others. And they may not all be supported on all systems.
Of course, you could go with the lowest common denominator (of just straight X11), but whatever you do, you're Netflix, so you're going to want something that plays smoothly, and that will at least require testing on a lot of different configurations.
Yep. The Yadif filter seems to generally the best, but feel free to experiment.
I would also recommend ditching Handbrake and switching to MeGUI -- or just straight-up MEncoder. Neither offer as much hand-holding as Handbrake, but offer much more fine control. I would highly recommend reading the MEncoder documentation, even if you don't plan on using it. You'll learn a lot about video encoding that will translate to other programs.
He's probably a command line junkie. Lots of people are. There's good reasons for it, as the CLI tends to be snappier and for those who know how to use it much more efficient, to say nothing about rock-solid stability.
As for the question itself, if the OP has an nVidia card or some ATI cards, it might be worth looking into console vidix. It's not quite true hardware acceleration, but it may work well enough. See chapter 4, section 13 of the mplayer manual.
mencoder is free, but you need to use the command line.
There are some GUI frontends on this page if you scroll down to the Mencoder Frontends section, but I haven't tried any of them before.
I've switched from WMP2 to MPC as soon as I've found about it. But now I use both windows and linux so I like to have same software on both. Also, I don't like to download codecs. (And I hate FFDShow).
Now I use MPlayerHQ. GUI is ugly (or it was a few years ago) so I use it without gui. Had to configure it a bit though.