[MPlayer-users] pixellation with msmpeg4v2

[Steve Kleene]

I've copied a home VHS video onto a DVD-RW (Video format) and am now trying
to encode that in a file that various relatives with XP machines can play.
With the following test:

mencoder dvd://1 -oac copy -ovc lavcopts -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:mbd:trell \
  -endpos 10 test.avi

I get a file that plays, with audio, in MovieMaker and MediaPlayer.  (It
plays with no sound in PowerPoint.)  Getting even this much to work in XP has
been non-trivial, but the msmpeg4v2 codec does succeed to a point.

Of course there's a problem.  The image quality is what I would call
pixellated, broken up into sort of a regular checkerboard.  It's like the
technique news people use to hide the identities of police informants, but
not nearly that coarse.  It's especially noticeable when there's a lot of
motion, e.g. during a zoom.  It looks the same when played with mplayer.  The
original DVD record is fine.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to minimize this problem.
Unfortunately, I am stuck with making something that will work on XP.  I'm
running Debian Etch and mplayer 1.0-rc1svn20070225-0.1

Thanks.