[MPlayer-users] Recording with mencoder

[Lee Jones]

Hi,

I was just wondering what command line options do I have to use to
produce reasonable picture quality but at the smallest filesize? I was
just wondering since up until very recently I was using real's
software to directly record from a capture card under mandrake linux
10 (the system is using a bt8x8 card, 700 mhz CPU with 512MB ram and a
40GB HDD).

The problem was that real's software *only* accepts a raw input so
converting other formats to real became a real problem. Also, their
software didn't work well very much above 320x256 (framedropping). So
in order to try to get better quality and filesize I decided to try
mencoder rather than realencoder (now named "producer").

I came up with the script (attached) and I decided to use divx (mpeg4)
compression, however while it works I find even at low quality
settings it does not do very well (files can turn out looking like a
patchwork quilt, all squeares  for example when an equivilent realfile
would at least be watchable if low quality).

Since there's no free/OSS direct equivilent of .rm files in existance
I was wondering what was the best settings to use with mencoder were.
I've attached a little script I use under mandrake 10 to do video
capture, but even at low quality settings, a minute's worth of video
still takes several MB (and can look awful) where I could get below
1MB for a realfile and - though not good quality - could still be
watched. In particular I'm wanting to know the settings so as to make
internet downloads as small as possible and still watchable.

I'm not sure if my script really has the right or optimal settings but
I was just wondering if anyone out there who knows more about mencoder
could provide me with better settings/command line options?

Thanks,
ljones
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