[MPlayer-users] mencoder parameters for iPod

[Andrew Daviel]

On Thu, 4 Feb 2010, Rolf Ernst wrote:

> Sorry, Andrew, that was the only reference info I had. It did not
> distinguish between player generations so that may have been dubious
> already. I don't have the device myself but the players I have are all very
> sensitive about which parameters are used in encoding.

I messed around with later versions of libplist, gtkpod, libgpod which 
have some support for the 5g. I could see some of the database, but 
finally managed to zap it writing with the latest libgpod-teuf-sandbox.
But that's not a big deal (the lack of support; the database recovered 
under iTunes on XP) as my daughter uses XP anyway. I was just

I'm really more interested in being able to convert files from 
camcorder/youtube etc. I guess there must be something free for Windows 
but I haven't looked.

I found "-lavfopts format=ipod" in the mencoder manpage, so my command 
looked like
$ mencoder -of lavf -lavfopts format=ipod -oac faac -ovc x264 foobar.avi -o foobar.m4v
(plus other options you suggest)
iTunes silently refuses to add the result to the library, so I don't 
actually know if it will play on the hardware since I have no way of 
getting it there. Quicktime player won't play it, saying "an invalid sample description was found".

I saw some comment in mplayer to the effect "lavf still has bugs", so 
maybe it is generating invalid data that Quicktime and iTunes choke on.

Can you give me some complete command lines that work with earlier iPods ?
Are you uploading direct from Linux or using iTunes on Mac/Windows ?
Do your files play in Windows Quicktime ?

(I did find some mp4's in my collection that do play, but I can't 
remember where they came from. Downloaded from the net, I expect)

regards, Andrew