[MEncoder-users] noencodedups - why not?

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 03:34:38PM -0500, Lee Morgan wrote:
> Thanks, but now looking at harddup and noencodedups I'm a bit confused, 
> what's the default action for mencoder
> (encoding duplicate frames or skip them)?

Arrg!!! Diego, i told you we should never have documented
-noencodedups!!!

With that said, pretend -encodedups/-noencodedups options don't exist.
What matters is whether you load the harddup filter or not.

Without harddup, mencoder does not encode a second copy of frames it
duplicates, but stores a 0-byte packet, which unofficially means
"repeat the previous frame" in avi files, but which is totally broken
in most other formats (such as mpeg). This is very bad if you're using
-of mpeg or if you plan to be moving your video to a container that
doesn't support this 0-byte-frame nonsense.

With harddup, mencoder encodes duplicated frames just like normal
frames. Of course since the contents are the same as the previous
frame, they'll use very little space. Personally I recommend always
using harddup unless you have a really good reason not to.

> I've been seeing a lot (hundreds) of "1 duplicate frame(s)!" while 
> encoding.

This means your output framerate is wrong. (Perhaps you're encoding
soft-telecined NTSC dvds?)

Rich