Hi,
I have some videos made with a digital camera in mjpeg format and I want to convert so something else, into xvid, mkv or I dont know, just to made them smaller without quality lose. So is there something GUI for this, or I need to start reading the mencoder man page? 
You’ve got winff not sure if this is what you’re after but there is a bit of a contradiction smaller without quality lost(How?).
Edit:
Also got xvidenc a shell frontend to mencoder.
What are the details of your original mpeg files? Install the packman packaged application mediainfo and then run it against one of the files to check the resolution, confirm the codec, bit rate, etc … with something like:
mediainfo your-file.mpeg
Then after that you will have sufficient detail to pass here resolution, bit rate, etc …
Assuming the resolution is not 1920x1080 with a high bit rate, then for xvid, you could try microchip’s application xvidenc: xvidenc - the interactive shell script ripper
In addition to being packaged for openSUSE by Microchip (and on his repository), it is also packaged and available from Packman
For example, if I want to convert a file to xvidec codec with xvidenc, I would type:
xvidenc -2p -p uhq
and follow the prompts, although there are MANY other starting options than the one I just applied in this example.
oldcpu:
It’s a 640x480 resolution, MJPEG coded video, 30 fps and 14Mbps bit rate. Thank you for your help, tomorrow I will try xvidenc.
FeatherMonkey:
Smaller size with same quality means to code the video with some more complex codec, like MPEG4, x264. At the moment they are coded with MJPEG, wich is MPEG1.
I need to send them over internet, so size matters, but I don’t want to lose quality ( or to lose minimal ). It is a way to convert to x264 with a GUI or a script, because there are to many options at mencoder.
Thank you!
Another Microchip one h264enc again a script also has the useful ability of dumping the mencoder command line before running, enabling you to see the generated command.
But realistically I would of thought h264 would be still chunky(Size) without losing much quality. But any way I would of thought h264enc would give you a starting point and has some human readable prompts along the way.
Edit:
My crude understanding is you would be using xvid/h264 to keep as much quality from a dvd where size isn’t the issue, but quality is as for which is best I leave that one to google.(I also have to admit I suspect you may even see an increase in size and as re-encoding maybe even slight loss in quality, but alas I don’t really know which codec packs the smallest with minimal loss(Or container) I suspect some experimenting.)
You could use ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i infile.mpg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -y outfile.avi
I think…
There is a LOT of good advice already on this thread. You may find, from a GUI perspective, that caf4926’s first suggestion of winFF works best for you. I do note some of the templates in winFF need tuning (especially the h264 ones), and they may tuning to avoid a segfault error.
microchips scripts (h264enc and xvidenc) can be run with their default values in the most part, in which case you just keep pressing enter for each proposed option, changing it only if you want to try and tune the presented default values.
Plan E(?)
Avidemux-qt4 which is a totally (and I think reliable) GUI solution.
It also allows you to do fairly sophisticated linear editing such as joining film segments, cutting out bits in the middle, resizing, re-encoding both A+V, de-interlacing etc etc.
BTW:I use it to remove adverts from TV programs.
got some good advice here already… my addition would be the Handbrake app in the packman repo if you are looking for a GUI.
One of my favorites, thou the developer dropped the xvid support a couple of updates ago. Older versions did xvid encoding also, now it’s h264 only (this also does mkv format).
Pavtube Video Convert,it’s not free but I really like the software. The main reason I bought it was the VERY user friendly interface. It’s very simple and direct. I’m a film student, and it converts all my footage to a small file size, which anyone will tell you is a lifesaver for any hard drive.I would use the addition ability to handle Tivo files.
Link: Pavtube Video Converter: Best software to convert video, convert WMV, AVI, MPEG.
For me MelodyCan is the best software for different players. It can remove drm and convert files to different formats. You can try it_))
Media