help substituting ffmpeg with mencoder >1gb limit

[terramir]

Hi guys I got some sort of >1gb ffmpeg problem with my avi's, I tried turning the bitrate down to 900 but the videos get all blocky I liked 1400 bitrate but with that I had like a limit of an hour and a half.
I would like to use mencoder to transcode to xvid I saw some threads, but when I saw them I couldn't quite understand how to do it
I know renaming mencoder to xvid is one thing I have to do and another thing is to rewrite the line for xvid (and probably divx too) to something mencoder understands. I don't want to resize the video like people in other threads do I just want it to reencode it into xvid avi.
here are my lines right now to get around the .1gb limitation
<Conversion name="XviD" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -f avi -ab 224 -ac 2 -acodec mp3 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 900 -vtag XVID {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension=".avi" />
<Conversion name="DivX" cmd="-y -i {SOURCE_FILE} -f avi -ab 224 -ac 2 -acodec mp3 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 900 -vtag DIVX {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension=".avi" />
I really don't know if mencoder can work with DivX but I know I need to use the codecs directly and not use the libavcodec because that is causing the >1gb limit please help.
Anyone got a rewrite for me?
terramir

[pBS]

nope,renaming mencoder to xvid won't do anything...
there is an Actual xvid.exe out there that is made by xvid people...
but mencoder has 2 ways to encode xvid tho..using straight up mpeg4 encoder from libav or an actual port of the xvid codec from the source...to use the 'real' xvid with mencoder you have to have compiled it in there in the first place..[can be seen when starting up mencoder at the top]
second you have to use the -ovc xvidenc and options for it are in -xvidencopts [not lavc opts] and it has it's own special ones...so RTM...
it's wayy slow tho so i use the regular mpeg4 codec and just give it a -fourcc of XVID...almost realtime and not much different quality..

second,if you're plannning on using mencoder Instead of ffmpeg,you'll have to rename it to ffmpeg.exe and stick it in the third party\ffmpeg\ dir as that is where gbpvr uses it from...
then change the config.xml options for that profile and set it for mencoder options instead..
i've made a way to substitue any encoder or even any process to use with built-in 'transcode' button in gbpvr...nebody seemed interested so i never finished it..[also came up fwith a new paradigm so i changed it]
let me know if interested and i'll shoot you a copy,i include several sample encode porofiles for ffmpeg, vlc and mencoder,and even the originals are still there]
pm me and ill let you check it out...works great for me..

[pBS]

oh and i just encoded a 3 gig+ movie to 2.35gig no problem with ffmpeg into a xvid avi...
certain versions had problems with movie length with both ffmpeg and mencoder,but the ffmpeg that comes with gbpvr is good..no problems..

[terramir]

well I got no dice I cannot access whether in gbpvr or any other app anything past >1gb Except in tmpgenc :confused: iot codes the file to for example 1.35 gb and it is the whole movie but any movie that is longer than 1hr 27 min and 54 sec cuts off playback at that point matter of fact that's the length it shows up at
I've posted help requests but nobody tells me what I am looking for to fix this there must be something wrong that's why I wanted to try direct encoding with xvid and the mencoder to see if that fixes my problem. What files am I looking for how do I check the versions could be that my libraries got screwed up somehow like the libavcodec library (where does that live and how do I check the version) these are some of the things that I need to know. so I can hunt, track down and phaser this problem out of existance (yeah yeah trekkie I am)
Anyhow got some specific clues on how to find the problem?
terramir

PS: I googled and quite frankly I cannot find any hints there either
terramir

[djtaylor]

oh and i just encoded a 3 gig+ movie to 2.35gig no problem with ffmpeg into a xvid avi...
certain versions had problems with movie length with both ffmpeg and mencoder,but the ffmpeg that comes with gbpvr is good..no problems..

Unless something has changed somewhere I disagree. Sure it creates the file bigger than 1GB without problems but the result is that it stops playback when it has read 1GB's worth. Have you watched or previewed this 2.35GB AVI?

David.

[sgilani]

I don't use the built-in transcoding option in GBPVR; I just have postprocessing.bat log the recording filename and i have a schduled task that runs a custom batch script I've made to do some things..

If you want to use the built-in transcoding feature, rename mencoder.exe to ffmpeg.exe so that GBPVR will find it, and try this for your commandline:

<Conversion name="MEncoder" cmd="{SOURCE_FILE} -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts bitrate=1500:me_quality=6:bvhq=1:chroma_me:chroma_opt:trellis:hq_ac:quant_type=mpeg -lameopts mode=2:cbr:br=128 -vf scale=640:480 -idx -o {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension=".avi" />

(the forums are putting a space in chroma_opt , make sure you omit the space when you insert this into config.xml )

Be sure to select "MEncoder" as your transcoding choice in the Config app. This will give you a high quality XviD that will look almost exactly like the original MPEG2, and runs about 650mb per hour, but feel free to tweak the bitrates and other options to your own liking.

If you're a real techie nut like me, you can make your own batch script to run overnight and do a 2-pass encode, but most likely this will work nicely for ya if you just want to sit back and enjoy your recordings.

[sgilani]

oh and i just encoded a 3 gig+ movie to 2.35gig no problem with ffmpeg into a xvid avi...
certain versions had problems with movie length with both ffmpeg and mencoder,but the ffmpeg that comes with gbpvr is good..no problems..

hmm.. well to be honest I haven't tested the ffmpeg bundled with 95.16, but at least in the past the problem lied in the libavcodec library that is shared by both ffmpeg and mencoder; I personally like mencoder better and the Windows builds are compiled with XviD support built in, which avoid this nasty problem.

btw, why are you only packing it down to 2.35gb? you can surely take that bitrate down a bit

[terramir]

actually the file was 1.35gb, anyway got a question is there anyway to tell it to leave the resolution alone my hauppauge card delivers a resolution of 720x480 while my winfast 2000/xp because of the software decoder plug-in will only work at 320x240 That's one thing that needs fixing in the plug-in because I know the winfast 2000/xp can do 640x480. Anyway I dun want mencoder to resize the the image takes up too much cpu power and is a bit unnecessary. @ 320x240 the bitrate should really be lower but heck you can't get everything you want lol
terramir
PS: I just tried that line above and it didn't work thank god I renamed ffmpeg to ffmpeg.old before I copied over anyhow can you look at that line again because it's not like mencoder crashes otherwise I would get an annoying windows error it just fails to start the transcoding window just closes

<Conversion name="MEncoder" cmd="{SOURCE_FILE} -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts bitrate=1500:me_quality=6:bvhq=1:chroma_me:chroma_ opt:trellis:hq_ac:quant_type=mpeg -lameopts mode=2:cbr:br=128 -vf scale=640:480 -idx -o {DEST_FILE}" targetExtension=".avi" />

thanks
terramir

[sgilani]

The reason I have it scale down to 640 x 480 is to preserve the correct 4:3 aspect ratio. With MPEG-2 files, the pixels aren't necessarily square, thats why a 720 x 480 video is still displayed in the correct ratio. For AVIs, you always have square pixels.. In this case, if you choose 720 x 480, you're really just wasting bits. Some video players are able to read the OpenDML header and show the clip in a 4:3 ratio, so you end up seeing the same quality you would with a 640 x 480 clip except that you wasted disk space for the extra pixels. btw, ive seen that it actually takes *less* CPU usage for smaller resolutions since the performance hit by the scaler is more than made up for the fact that you have less video to encode.

If you really want to keep the original resolution anyway, just remove the "-vf scale=640:480" part.

whew, having said that.. lol Did you make sure to remove the space in chroma_opt? (in the forums it shows up as chroma_ opt, but that space shouldn't be there)

If it still won't work, try doing it manually to make sure something else isn't the problem.. (open up a DOS prompt, go to the FFmpeg directory, and type mencoder <your_source> -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame ..... (all that crap)

Trust me, the commandline itself is correct; it's what I'm using everyday Give it another shot and post back to let us know what's going on.