Warning: Mencoder and large MPEG2 files can fail

[jam_zhou]

Just wanted to give a heads up to something I just learned about mencoder. It looks like some builds of mencoder cannot process files larger than 1023 MB - I think it's got something to do with ODML. It probably won't affect most people, but for sports watchers, it can really screw things up.

I record the Tour de France and I had just switched to a newer build of mencoder and the last weeks worth of recordings are gone. I switched back to my older version and the recording played fine. Sorry, can't give details on the versions used as I don't know how.

AAARGH...if it ain't broke don't fix it!!!!

Jam.z

[sgilani]

yeah, unfortunately I've been bitten by that bug too.. I fixed it by instead editing my transcode script to convert over to x264-encoded files. Quality is great, and more importantly filesize is much less, and using CRF is the best of both worlds in my opinion since it removes the need of a second pass while still yielding constant quality and bitrate savings just like a two-pass xvid/divx does. Give it a shot.