FFMPEG, Mencoder (or not) conversion.

[Jordon Bedwell]

On Mon, 2010-08-09 at 10:17 -0400, Rashkae wrote:
> Jordon Bedwell wrote:
> 
> I don't know for certain in this case, but muxing is the process of 
> combining the video and other streams (such as audio/subtitles, etc) 
> into a container format (such as mkv).... so I would assume muxing 
> overhead means filesize overhead for the chosen container format.
> 

Sounds about right, thanks :D

> H.264 is currently the most widely used video codec, and is, in fact, 
> the native codec used by BD discs and digital HD television.  (so yes, 
> it does support 1080p,, or whatever resolution you want to crank it at.

I didn't know that, thanks for t he heads up.  Do you have a personal
preference on codecs? The only reason I initially chose it wasn't
because of the HD (though when I heard it was it affirmed it) it was
because my Droid X.

> Note that mencoder options are a little arcane and need to be customized 
> for the source.  (In this case, I'm applying a reverse telecine filter 
> to an anime source.).  Reading and understanding Mencoder documentation 
> is a must, and there is, to my knowledge, no magic incantation that just 
> works for all sources.  However, I now use Handbrake for this job (which 
> you have not mentioned in your OP), which does, for the vast majority of 
> video I've thrown at it, do the right thing with a single set of options.
> 

Perhaps you can give me a little more info on Handbrake? I plan to
download and experiment myself as well, but it's always good to hear
from another mouth what they like about it and what they know about it.

> It's also worth mentioning that while it is still widely used, Mencoder 
> is considered by it's developers to be deprecated and unsupported.

I didn't know that, but it also gives me a reason to tell some of my
clients on RHEL based distros to move to another platform because I get
sick of dependency hell with mencoder on RHEL distros, even when
compiling from the source >.>


> Encoding is fully threaded and will work across your CPU's (but not 
> GPU's).  You'll actually be able to cut the time by almost a complete half.

Not using the GPU's is fine but that's a huge jump in reduction by just
threading across all my CPU's so that's good for me :D.