Re: [gentoo-user] Handbrake: Is it is or is it ain't in portage

[Indexer <indexer@internode.on.net>]

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> 
> Well, I'm a newb in video, but it was suggested to me by someone who uses
> it, so I wanted to try.

Mplayer comes with a program called mencoder, which will do your video encoding. Its a bit more "hands on" but it is excellent once you learn it.

> 
> My underling thing, if anyone can make other suggestions, is that my camera
> broke, and I had to get
> one in a hurry, and didn't really know what to look for.  I wound up with a
> fairly good Sanyo 1080p camera
> and video recorder that's super light, and not too expensive.  The problem
> is that its videos are MP4s,
> which are definitely not ready to put on a web site, and I know nothing
> about transcoding.   My previous
> camera took acceptable .avi videos, which had worked with most folks
> browsers.  The MP4s are huge
> and in a weakly supported format.

IIRC, isnt MP4 just a container? what are the video codecs and audio codecs in the file? If they are 264 and mp3, you should be able to use HTML5 for them natively. 

MP4 is actually gaining alot of support in many OSes due to it being part of the HTML5 spec. 

If you need help with video transcoding, i'm happy to assist you as it makes up a small part of what i do in the work place. Just send me an email. (indexer@internode.on.net)

The basic run down is that you have a container format, that holds an audio and video stream. the container, has no part to play in what the video or audio codecs are, only the storage of subtitles and other metadata. 

Generally, with a program like mencoder you would use mencoder -vo <video codec> -ao <audio codec> -o file.<container extension>

In the majority of cases, it is the video codec, not the container that holds the issues, especially with the use of weird video codecs. (such as myself who is fighting with someone convinced they want to use real video still .....)

Thus if your camera is producing MP4, you should find out what video and audio codecs it is outputting. This can be done with mplayer from the command line, as when it opens a file it gives output similar to this

bash-3.2$ mplayer /Volumes/Storage/Videos/Butterfly_Total_Remix_Pro.flv 
MPlayer UNKNOWN-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
141 audio & 304 video codecs

Playing /Volumes/Storage/Videos/Butterfly_Total_Remix_Pro.flv.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO:  [FLV1]  320x240  0bpp  24.000 fps  336.4 kbps (41.1 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 duration: 229
 videodatarate: 329
 lastkeyframetimestamp: 229
 lastkeyframelocation: 9435531
 creator: YouTube, Inc.
 metadatacreator: YouTube Metadata Injector.
 haskeyframes: true
 hasmetadata: true
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffflv] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Flash video)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 8.0 kbit/1.13% (ratio: 1000->88200)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [coreaudio] 22050Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 320 x 240 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 4
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 1 -> 1
SwScaler: reducing / aligning filtersize 5 -> 4
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]BICUBIC scaler, from yuv420p to yuyv422 using MMX2
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using 4-tap MMX scaler for horizontal luminance scaling
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using 4-tap MMX scaler for horizontal chrominance scaling
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]using n-tap MMX scaler for vertical scaling (BGR)
[swscaler @ 0x100838a00]320x240 -> 320x240
VO: [corevideo] 320x240 => 320x240 Packed YUY2 
[ASPECT] Warning: No suitable new res found!
A:   3.2 V:   3.2 A-V: -0.007 ct:  0.184   0/  0  2%  5%  2.2% 0 0 

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: sleep_timer
A:   3.3 V:   3.2 A-V:  0.050 ct:  0.188   0/  0  2%  5%  2.2% 0 0 
Exiting... (Quit)

The sections you are interested in, are between the ====  signs. They tell you it is a Flash video, with MP3 audio. You can also see it is a flash container. It may be worth running one of your videos with mplayer to find what codecs they are using.

> 
> I'm somewhere on the learning curve, obviously, but having trouble getting
> coherent advice.

Yes, its always difficult to work out the good from the bad. Im sure we have all been at that stage, and its why email lists like this are here to help. You get to see alot of opinions and you can choose the one that suits you best, as well as test some of the ideas we give you. :)

> 
> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

William Brown

pgp.mit.edu



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