[MPlayer-users] Greetings to all and a mencode question...

[gabor]

maybe you should send this to mplayer-dev-eng at mplayerhq.hu too.....

bye,
gabor

On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 04:32, J. J. Franzen wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> D Richard Felker III wrote:
> 
> >-vfwopts codec=filename.dll
> >
> >Sorry it doesn't seem to be in the docs. BTW why are you using vfw for
> >encoding?
> >
> Well, it's a long sorted tale...  I hope you've had some coffee recently...
> 
>      I'm one of the Sys Admins for the animated TV show, South Park. 
>  Until recently, we were using Avid's Media Composer Version 7.x to edit 
> the show.  We recently updated to Avid's Media Composer 10.x.  In doing 
> so, we unknowingly broke a part of our production pipeline.  Currently, 
> the way we get our animation onto the Avids is to send the rendered 
> frames to a DDR, and then have the editors do a batch digitize to get 
> the shots off of the DDR.  I know, it's screwy, but it's the fastest 
> method we had at the time to get shots in.  And when you're turning 
> around over 100 shots in a day, speed is essential.
> 
>      So what's the problem now?  Avid broke support for DDRs, saying 
> that instead of having support for generic tape decks, which is what our 
> DDR emulated, they now have support for each individual type of deck. 
>  Of course, this means our DDRs no longer work as reliably as they used 
> to, and the editors are getting constant errors when they digitize now. 
>  Add in the fact that the company that made our DDRs has long since 
> vanished off the planet, and it becomes obvious we need to find another 
> way to get animation into our Avids.
> 
>      Which brings us to why I'm using mencode and vfw.  I need some way 
> to automate encoding our rendered frames into a QT file using Avid's 
> Meridian uncompressed codec, since during all the tests I've done, it 
> has the fastest import time, hands down.  Example:
> 
> 224 frame shot @ 720X486
> QT Raw - 40 secs to import
> QT Animation Codec - 34 secs to import
> QT PhotoJpeg Codec - 37 secs to import
> QT Avid Meridian Uncompressed Codec - 8 secs to import
> 
>      Importing the individual frames was faster than the QTs (except the 
> Avid codec'd one) at about 25 secs, but the import time of that Avid 
> codec'd file is just awesome, and is actually faster than the method we 
> currently have in place.  Right now, I'm using QT Pro under Windows 2000 
> to make the QTs, but QT Pro has no command line functionality (and is 
> Win2K based).  So, what we need to do is find a way to automate the 
> creation of these files under Linux.  After badgering various mailing 
> lists, your project was mentioned, and it is by far and wide the most 
> promising.
> 
>      After all that, here's where I'm at now.  I tried running:
> 
> mencoder -v 671_00_01.tga.\* -mf on:w=720:h=486:fps=24:type=tga -ovc vfw 
> -vfwopts codec=AvidAVICodec.dll -nosound -o output.avi
> 
> and I get a seg violation...  I'm recompiling now with debug to see if I 
> can get any extra info out of it...  Interesting...  It's dying at line 
> 173 of aclib_template.c.  Actual message is:
> 
> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> [Switching to Thread 1024 (LWP 30031)]
> fast_memcpy_MMX2 (to=0x380488b0, from=0x4054688a, len=2144) at 
> aclib_template.c:173
> 173                 small_memcpy(to, from, delta);
> 
> Hmm...  Perhaps if I compile with MMX off?  Interesting.  Well, I'm 
> gonna keep beating my head against this, but in the meantime, I have 
> another question for you guys.
> 
>      What would you guys charge to include the functionality I'm looking 
> for into your package, and how long do you think it would take?  I 
> mentioned to my boss just how promising your tool looked and he told me 
> that they'd be willing to pay to have someone "fix it" for us...  I 
> might as well spec out exactly what we'd want a custom tool to do as 
> well, just in case anyone does want to write some code for us...
> 
> Here's what we would need (based on what we do now).  A Linux command 
> line utility that takes a series of frames in whatever format you guys 
> are comfy with (targa is fine), takes the first frame and writes the 
> text from a textfile on top of the image (The text would be something 
> like "Shot Number: 155_00\nTake: 03\nAnimator: Bob\nFrames:224"), then 
> copy that frame six times, then begin the actual sequence after them (we 
> do this to help the editors in referencing the shots), then duplicate 
> the last 6 frames as well (again for the editor's sake), then do a 3/2 
> pulldown on the entire sequence (the 6 header frames + the original 
> frames + the 6 tail frames), and write the whole bloody thing out to a 
> QT file using the Avid Meridian Uncompressed codec.  Simple, no?  ;-p
> 
>      I know this is silly, but we're in a bind, and since I know next to 
> nothing about reading/writing image or video formats, and don't have the 
> time to learn, perhaps you lads could help us out.  And as always around 
> here, we're in a rush, so we'd need it done soon.  Just a thought I had. 
>  I don't know how much they'd be willing to pay for something like this. 
>  What do you guys think would be fair?  Anyways, back to banging my head 
> on that seg violation(inbetween render wrangling and helping artists). 
>  Thanks for the help.  Later,
> 
> J. J. Franzen
> 
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