Playing .avi file

[Mark Widdicombe]

On 5 April 2013 09:50, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 5 April 2013 01:14, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 04/04/2013 01:42 PM, Colin Law wrote:
>>>
>>> On 4 April 2013 18:52, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 04/04/2013 08:24 AM, Colin Law wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4 April 2013 09:04, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Using mplayer to play an avi file.
>>>>>> the dir where the file resides also contains an srt (subtitles file).
>>>>>> The files are named
>>>>>> Sams_Journey.avi  and
>>>>>> Sams_Journey.srt
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If I play the avi file with mplayer, the subtitles do appear.
>>>>>> However,if I copy the avi file alone to another dir and I
>>>>>> play the avi file in that dir, the subtitles do not appear.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is there a way for me to incorporate the subtitles file into the
>>>>>> avi file, or (any other format, such as mpg or mp4)?
>>>>>
>>>>> If you first convert it to an mp4 using ffmpeg or avconv, example,
>>>>> then you can add the subtitles using MP4Box
>>>>> MP4Box -add file.srt file.mp4
>>>>>
>>>>> To convert to mp4 I use something like
>>>>> avconv -y -i file.avi -vcodec libx264 -pre libx264-medium -crf  22
>>>>> -threads 0 file.mp4
>>>>> You might have to add something for the audio track, I don't know.
>>>>> Mine are video only.  Also you may want to tweak the settings to get
>>>>> the quality you require.
>>>>>
>>>>> There may be better ways, but that is what I do.
>>>>>
>>>>> Colin
>>>>>
>>>> Will this work if I only want to convert to mpeg1 format?
>>>
>>> The commands I posted converts to mp4 and then adds the audio track,
>>> so obviously those commands will not convert to mpeg1.  avconv can
>>> convert to mpeg1 but MP4Box only works with mp4.  The clue is in the
>>> name.
>>>
>>> Colin
>>
>> Found on the web this invocation of ffmpeg from ffmpeg.org
>> which converts avi to mpg and merges the subs in one command:
>>
>> ffmpeg -i Canyon_Trip.avi -vf subtitles=Canyon_Trip.srt  -y Canyon_Trip.mpg
>
> You need to use the -b option to specify the video bitrate (and hence
> the quality).  The bigger it is the better the quality and the bigger
> the file and the slower the conversion.  Of course once you get to a
> value greater than your input file it just makes the file bigger with
> no increase in quality.  You could start with something like -b
> 6000000.

Or, equivalently,  -b 600k.  I find converting always results in a
loss of quality, whatever value I use for -b, although it is better
than the default value used if the -b option is omitted.