[MPlayer-users] Best quality universal format?...

[Steven M. Schultz]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004, Paul Simpson wrote:

> I think I'm almost there.  Here's what I've done:
> 
> $ mencoder "mf://pics/*.tga" -mf w=720:h=576:fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc 
> lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
>     // turn my .tga sequence into a mpeg4 .avi file (this plays fine in 
> windows media player as a divx4 movie)
> 
> $ avi2raw output.avi output.m4v
> avi2raw - mpeg4ip version 1.0
> 54 video frames written
> 
> So far so good.

	Right - that's what I do to get a .m4v file from mencoder.

> $ mp4creator -c output.m4v -rate=25 -H output.mp4

	Can leave out the -H unless you're streaming the video since the -H
	adds a "hint" track that's only used for things such as the
	Darwin Streaming Server.

> I get a quicktime data corrupted err msg.

	Do you have a Mac around to test with?

> You mentioned the lavcopts bit_exect option.  I can't see that anywhere 
> - and I'm using
>     MPlayer 1.0pre3-RPM-3.2.2

	I use the CVS version of ffmpeg/libavcodec + mplayer.  If you do
	a 'man mencoder' and see this paragraph:

       bit_exact
	      Use only bit exact algorithms (except (i)dct).  Ad-
	      ditionally bit_exact disables several optimizations
	      and thus should only be used for regression  tests,
	      which  need  binary identical files even if the en-
	      coder version changes.  This  also  suppresses  the
	      user_data	header	in  MPEG-4  streams.  Do not use
	      this option unless you know exactly  what	you  are
	      doing.

	then you simply add "bit_exact" to the lavcopts line you use with
	mencoder:

-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:bit_exact:vbitrate=...

	If you don't have that option then it may be necessary to build
	the cvs version of mencoder and ffmpeg/libavcodec.

> ..this is where I get unstuck.  output.mp4 doesn't play in quicktime on 
> my windows box. 

	Apple's QT player would pop up a warning about a 'corrupted file'
	but after dismissing the error the file would play fine.

	I do not know exactly why the person I sent the mp4 file to had
	problems playing back - I suspect they didn't have the right codecs
	installed.

	Steven Schultz