[MEncoder-users] Bad mencoder video with -ss and -endpos

[Phil Oleynik]

Greger Bergman wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I am trying to extract a small sample from an avi movie. The video 
>quality of the sample is not good in the beginning. My question is why?
>
>The movie was encoded from a dvd:
>
>    mencoder dvd://1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -aid 128 \
>      -ovc frameno -o frameno.avi
>
>    mencoder dvd://1 -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 \
>      -vf crop=704:416:2:80,scale=640:272 -o /dev/null
>
>    menoder dvd://1 -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=867 \
>      -vf crop=704:416:2:80,scale=640:272 -o movie.avi
>
>The sample:
>
>    mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -ss 00:54:05 -endpos 60 \
>      -o sample.avi movie.avi
>
>
>If I encode the sample with -nosound the video looks good:
>
>    mencoder -nosound -ovc copy -ss 00:54:05 -endpos 60 \
>      -o sample.avi movie.avi
>
>It seems to me that the audio is my problem.
>
>Any tips on how to solve this problem would be much appreciated.
>
>  
>
Hello!

If it is the only problem - encode sound and video into separate files 
and then merge it.
First, you should try to play them separately using e.g. mplayer 
-audiofile xxx.mp3

If you are not planning to play this video on hardware dvd-player, 
supporting divx
(I have not heard of any player supports xvid! So it is might be a point 
also.),
pack video and audio into OGM or MKV. This will save your time greatly.

Phil