[MPlayer-users] Re: Question on "trans-coding" with mencoder...

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 09:01:13AM +0200, Rainer Hantsch wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Tue, 19 Aug 2003, Jonathan Rogers wrote:
> | Is there a *nix tool to concatenate MPEG Program Streams? Here's a clear
> | answer: YES. It's called "cat." Read the manpage for details.
> 
> Thanks, I _know_ how to use 'cat'. ;-)
> 
> What I didn't know is if/that this is really possible, because it will leave
> additional MPEG header(s) within the file after merging multiple mpegs this
> way. I saw a lot of MPEG files crashing XINE exactly on such boundaries,
> they were probably made this way, so it seems not to be such trivial...

Because xine is buggy... :)

> Anyway, because I prefer DivX4, I will convert the MPEG afterwards. But does
> mencoder remove these additional headers while converting from MPEG to DivX4?
> It theoretically _should_, because it has to recode the whole video stream,
> but when it does not ship the headers, it will cause either glitches in
> video/audio, or loose sync between them.

Of course they're gone after reencoding.

> Only to clearify:
> I have already found a temporary solution for this one video, but it is not
> practical for permanent usage. My son's PC also has win98 installed, with a
> mpeg editing prog. There I cutted/pasted the final mpg, and then I converted
> it on my linux box into DivX4. But as i said, this is no permanent solution,
> and it is nut funny to transfer gigabytes over the LAN, so i am looking
> for a solution without Windoze. And understanding exactly how mplayer/mencoder
> work(s), will be the first step.

Cat the mpeg files together. This will always work unless your mpeg
files are different resolution or very very broken.

Rich