Re: [gentoo-user] DVD->mp4 - handbrake vs something else

[Andrey Moshbear <andrey.vul@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 11:28, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 4:39 AM, Andrey Moshbear <andrey.vul@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 16:09, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm getting a Kindle Fire in a few days. While I didn't get it
>>> specifically to watch movies looking at the specs it does apparently
>>> handle mp4 as a video format and they state online that you can watch
>>> streaming movies & TV shows from Amazon's servers. I do a lot of blood
>>> donations - roughly 20-25 times/year - that take 2-3 hours each so
>>> either being able to read or watch a movie would be a pleasant way to
>>> pass the time. Being able to hold it comfortably in one hand is
>>> important to me.
>>>
>>> I started looking around in Google for something to encode a few DVDs
>>> so that I could see how well it works. A program called handbrake was
>>> showing up in a lot of links, but it requires an overlay. While I have
>>> no problem adding yet another overlay (which on is best?) I wondered
>>> what might be in the normal portage database that others here use for
>>> this purpose?
>>>
>>
>> I use vobcopy to rip each title to a vob (instead of VTS_${TITLE}_$n)
>> then 2-pass ffmpeg the vob to transcode to mkv.
>>
>> Makes batch transcoding rather fast and painless.
>>
>>
>
> Thanks. Here's my progress so far using a Casablanca DVD as a test case.
>
> Again, my goal by the middle of next month is to run videos on the
> Kindle Fire. The spec sheets for the Fire says it's supports mp4. I
> don't see any other obvious video formats.
>
> 1) I tried vobcopy. I got 6GB of files. I assumed ffmpeg was the next
> step but didn't easily Google how to run it in this specific case so I
> set it aside for the moment.

Was your vobcopy line $vobcopy -i /path/to/mountpoint -n ${TITLE_NO}
-l -O ${MOVIE}_${TITLENO}.vob ?

My ffmpeg lines for dvd to mkv:

2.0 audio:
for a in 1 2; do schedtool -B -e nice ffmpeg -threads 4 -i $file.vob
-pass $a -vcodec libx264 -b 800k -deinterlace -acodec libfaac -ac 2
-ab 192k -y $file.mkv ;done

5.1:
for a in 1 2; do schedtool -B -e nice ffmpeg -threads 4 -i $1.vob
-pass $a -vcodec libx264 -x264opts preset=slower -b 800k -deinterlace
-acodec libfaac -ac 6 -ab 440k -y $1.mkv ;done

I use schedtool and nice to keep ffmpeg from hogging the cpu.

>
> My issue now (I think) is to learn to use ffmpeg to convert from m4v
> to mp4. I'd like to see about reducing the file size a bit if
> possible. At the same time the native resolution of the Fire is
> 1024x600 so I'm wondering about whether I can make the movies look
> better by making the mp4 file somehow know about that size.

Downscale hd to 480p and de-interlace DVDs and other 480i content.
720x480 will look pretty good on a 1024x600 (WSVGA) screen.