I have a .MOV (Quicktime) file I want to convert to an AVI, because I need to read it into some software which only handles AVI files.
The movie is only a few seconds, and monochrome without sound, and at present is 1MB in size. I'm not too worried about filesize, although if I convert to a raw (uncompressed) video file it comes out to about 350MB, which isn't good.
So far, I have found: mencoder -ovc xvid -xvidencopts fixed_quant=4 test.mov -o test.avi .. to be pretty good.
Now, what I'm trying to achieve is to get the file into a format which (a) is as close as possible to the original (ie little loss of quality, not that the original is high quality anyway), and (b) likely to work on a different PC (Linux or Windows) with minimal codec issues. Are there any "standard" video formats I can rely on?
On Wed, 07 May 2008 16:30:33 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Now, what I'm trying to achieve is to get the file into a format which (a) is as close as possible to the original (ie little loss of quality, not that the original is high quality anyway), and (b) likely to work on a different PC (Linux or Windows) with minimal codec issues. Are there any "standard" video formats I can rely on?
Mark
Try mpeg4 avi format. I use aac or mp3 as the audio codec depending on the target (aac is usually good).
ffmpeg is flexible and faster than mencoder
Try "ffmpeg -i infile -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec mp3 outfile.avi"
or "ffmpeg -i infile -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac outfile.avi"
Mick
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mbm wrote:
Try mpeg4 avi format. I use aac or mp3 as the audio codec depending on the target (aac is usually good).
ffmpeg is flexible and faster than mencoder
Thanks for the hint. Although encoding speed isn't a big issue (it's a one-off).
I did try:
Try "ffmpeg -i infile -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec mp3 outfile.avi"
.. but my Windows test PC couldn't play it back (via media player), even with a current codec pack (Gordian Knot) installed. Played fine on my main (Linux) desktop, of-course, but where's the surprise in that?!
NB: I think that the Windows software that I need to make work is using "Video for Windows" rather than DirectX and I have some vague idea that maybe it doesn't use the same codecs or something (it doesn't play anything I've created so far). Anyway, something really basic and completely compatible with everything would be preferable, I think.
Otherwise I might be able to do what I need by converting the AVI file to a set of single-frame images (eg jpegs or pngs) first. I've not looked into that yet, but I'm sure Google will know!
On Wed, 07 May 2008 19:03:43 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
I did try:
Try "ffmpeg -i infile -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec mp3 outfile.avi"
.. but my Windows test PC couldn't play it back (via media player), even with a current codec pack (Gordian Knot) installed. Played fine on my main (Linux) desktop, of-course, but where's the surprise in that?!
OK - try the msmpeg4 video codec or xvid. Sorry, I don't have a windows box to try this on.....
Mick ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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mbm wrote:
OK - try the msmpeg4 video codec or xvid. Sorry, I don't have a windows box to try this on.....
Don't apologise for the lack of a windows box, I'm envious!
Using msmpeg4 worked a treat, thanks.
-
Mark Rogers -
mbm