Linux Video Format (and Other) Conversions

i just posted a howto at videohelp about prepping a compressed type AVI for DVD authoring using only the tools readily available to us suse users(no need to compile a new version of something or other). it's mostly the same as what i posted here but with more detail and explanation.

http://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t...aea5e7f1c9cc960

this is how i ripped the holy trilogy for use on a single dvd5(going to bed dvd):

pop new hope in the drive and extract title 1
$ mencoder dvd://1 -o swch4.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=4000 -vf pp=fd

extract the audio to a wav file
$ mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast -ao pcm:file=swch4.wav swch4.avi

normalize it
$ normalize swch4.wav

convert the wav to mp2
$ toolame -s 48000 -b 128 -p 2 swch4.wav swch4.mp2

convert the video to mpeg2 elementary video stream
$ avidemux2 --load swch4.avi --output-format ES --video-codec XDVD --video-conf 2pass=1000 --save swch4.mpg --quit

i scripted the whole process to do all 3 at once(except for the actual rip from dvd...no matter how hard i try i can't make bash take out a disc and put in a new one). i'm sure i can consolidate some steps and eliminate some redundancy but this how i did this particular disc. i'll try and fix it before i do LOTR trilogy.

the last step is to author the dvd. i currently use dvdlabpro2 through crossover because it's just unrivaled. if you want a going to bed compilation disc, make sure you [end link] a play all button to itself so the sucker will just play all night.
[/b]

How long would these processes take in a 3.2GHz, 2GB DDR Ram computer?

HOW TO CONVERT STILL IMAGES TO SHORT VIDEO CLIPS

I've copied this from another web site (referenced below). I find, given the relatively poor state of Linux Non-Linear Video Editors in mixing still images with video clips, it useful to be able to convert one's still images, to short 3 or 4 second long (or longer) video clips, that can then be imported into the Linux Non Linear Video editor, and mixed with various original movie clips.

I found this information here on this "relatively old" (but still very good) post:
http://gecius.de/linux/dvd.html

The following quote explains how to create the short video clips (from still images):

Photos

Now, I wanted to add all the digital pictures to that DVD, as there was plenty of space on the disc. But it also needs additional steps to convert the images to a DVD-compatible format, which, you're right, is mpeg.

To change the images to the correct aspect-ration for tv (pal, in my case), I did

mp2enc -r 48000 -o silence.mp2 < silence.wav

I had some trouble piping the m2v directly into mplex, so I did the step with the intermediary m2v as a file. Use the same logic with the for-loop above for generating some more files in one step.[/b]

How long would these processes take in a 3.2GHz, 2GB DDR Ram computer?
[/b]

sorry puma, didn't notice this thread had responses. the longest process would be the video conversion with avidemux2. i've switched avidemux2.4.0 command line version and to single pass(since vid quality is not that important in this instance and it halves the time)

$ avidemux2_cli --load video.avi --output-format ES --video-codec DVD --filters resize_border.flt --video-conf cbr=4000 --save video.mpg

resize_border.flt is the filter file saved from the gui version of avidemux2.

anyway, on my system*, the video conversion is very close to real time(an hour of video takes about an hour to convert). the next longest process would be the audio extraction. again, on my system, IIRC it's about 1:10(1 minute to 10 minutes of audio).

the rest of them should be pretty quick.

*AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+
1GB corsair xms ddr
dfi infinity nf4 sli mobo

Reference: http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.ph...st&p=238643

==========================================

Credits to Microchip for contributing the above.

1. ffmpeg -i input-movie.avi -s 320x240 -ar 44100 -r 12 output-movie.flv
2. cat output-movie.flv | flvtool2 -U stdin output-movie.flv[/b]

Reference for the above is here:
http://flowplayer.org/documentation/encoding

I don't know why the second line is necessary. If someone can point out the reason, I'll edit this post of mine. I did install flvtool (it uses ruby to build) and ran it, but I noticed no difference. http://rubyforge.org/projects/flvtool2/

BUT the overall quality of the flv file created by line#1 (the ffmpeg command) is a vast improvement of the one quoted.


Edit: the explanation given for the flvtool2 command is here (and I don't know enough about FLV format to understand why this is important):

The flvtool2 command above add the video duration into the FLV's metadata. FlowPlayer reads the duration information from the FLV and displays it. You can also use flvtool2 to tag cue points into the FLV. Cue points can be used to enhance the support for long videos.[/b]

Here is a handy reference providing various command line video conversion methods:
http://en.linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_Convert_video_files

The explanations are useful.

ffmpeg -i input-video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 output-video.avi
Could anyone please tell me where you get the info about the values of ab, ar, b, resolution 320X240...etc?
I mean how you determine what values to put in the above command?
Thank you!

ffmpeg -i input-video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 output-video.avi
Could anyone please tell me where you get the info about the values of ab, ar, b, resolution 320X240...etc?
I mean how you determine what values to put in the above command?
Thank you!
[/b]

kind of answer myself

using following command can do almost lossless convertion
ffmpeg -i sourcefile -sameq outputfile

it's in "man ffmpeg"

Extracting mp3 audio directly from flv file:

ffmpeg -i video.flv -f mp3 -ab 128k audio_track.mp3

video.flv --> your video file
128k --> change for your preferred bitrate
audio_track.mp3 --> your output mp3 audio


For instance, I downloaded this from youTube and wanted the song badly; to achieve it, I typed this in the terminal:

ffmpeg -i KillerInstinct2-ComboTheme.flv -f mp3 -ab 128k KillerInstinct2-ComboTheme.mp3

h34r:
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