[MPlayer-users] -o?c copy documentation (was Re: Encoding 5.1 to stereo with framecopy#)

[Adam Rice]

Quoting Daniel Moreno (comac2k at terra.es):
> "-oac copy" means, surprisingly, COPY.

Since this now seems to come up every other day, I had a look at the
documentation to see if it could be improved. The manpage says:

       -oac <codec name>
              Encode  with the given audio codec.  Use -oac help to get a list
              of available codecs.  (no default set)

              EXAMPLE:
                 -oac copy
                      no encoding, just streamcopy
                 -oac pcm
                      encode to uncompressed PCM
                 -oac mp3lame
                      encode to MP3 (using Lame)
                 -oac lavc
                      encode with a libavcodec codec

       -ovc <codec name>
              Encode  with the given video codec.  Use -ovc help to get a list
              of available codecs.  (no default set)

              EXAMPLE:
                 -ovc copy
                      no encoding, just streamcopy
                 -ovc divx4
                      encode to DivX4/DivX5
                 -ovc rawrgb
                      encode to uncompressed RGB24
                 -ovc rawyuv
                      encode to uncompressed YUV (I420)
                 -ovc lavc
                      encode with a libavcodec codecs

mencoder -oac help says:
Available codecs:
   copy     - frame copy, without re-encoding (useful for AC3)
   pcm      - uncompressed PCM audio
   mp3lame  - cbr/abr/vbr MP3 using libmp3lame
   lavc     - ffmpeg audio encoder (mp2, ac3, ...)

mencoder -ovc help says:
Available codecs:
   copy     - frame copy, without re-encoding. doesn't work with filters!
   frameno  - special audio-only file for 3-pass encoding, see DOCS!
   rawrgb   - uncompressed RGB 24bpp video
   rawyuv   - uncompressed 4:2:0 YUV (I420) 12bpp video
   nuv      - nuppel video
   lavc     - using libavcodec codecs - best quality!
   vfw      - using VfW DLLs, currently only AVID is supported
   qtvideo  - using QuickTime DLLs, currently only SVQ1/3 are supported

mencoder itself gives more useful information, but the manpage gives little
incentive to look it up. So I propose updating the manpage to match the output
of mencoder. Also the "doesn't work with filters!" message could usefully be
added to -oac copy.

If for some reason this is unpallatable, another fix would be to simply remove
the details of the different codecs from the manpage, thus forcing people to
run mencoder -oac help etc. to get the information. I don't think this is very
friendly but it would get the job done.

Adam

-- 
Adam Rice -- adamrice at ntlworld.com -- Blackburn, Lancashire, England