Slashdot Mirror

In the off chance that you're running on Windows;
http://mion.faireal.net/BES/
( ugly UI, does the job )

So it seems like it ought to be possible to 'recontainerize' a Divx .divx or .avi into an .mp4 file without decompressing and recompressing it, thus avoiding loss.

Get mencoder for demuxing from avi, MP4Box for muxing into mp4 and optionally AtomicParsley for metadata. Windows binaries: [1] [2] [3]

On Linux install the packages MPlayer and gpac.

Sample code

mencoder -ovc copy -nosound -of rawvideo -o "temp.264" "the.avi"
mencoder -ovc frameno -oac copy -of rawaudio -o "temp.aac" "the.avi"
MP4Box -fps $fps -add "temp.264"#video -add "temp.aac"#audio -new "the.mp4"
atomicparsley "the.mp4" --stik "Music Video" -W

You can find out the framerate (frames per second) of the avi with ffmpeg [4].

ffmpeg -i "the.avi" nul 2>&1

Look for the line with fps in it.

RTFM of the parsley to see what sort of metadata you can add.

Now mod me up, bitches.

No, you don't need Cygwin for ffmpeg...

If you know how to open a Command Window in Windows (cmd.exe) and can cd (change directory) to a folder, you can use ffmpeg.

There are compiled Win32 ffmpeg binaries here: http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/

(you'll need this .dll in the same folder as ffmpeg.exe: ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/dll-latest /lib/pthreadGC2.dll )

Now, I might be wrong, but chances are that what you got instead of Ogg Theora compressed files were Ogg Media Files (.ogm).

OGM is a container format for audio/video that supports multiple subtitles (just like you mentioned) and multiple audio tracks. From what I personally know, the video is usually compressed with XviD and the audio with Ogg Vorbis.

(see also Matroska which does the above, and more)

How come noone has mentioned OGM as a container format?? Last I checked it was the best cross platform format out there. It's completely compatible with Mpg4 and Xvid and the documentation on how to use it seems adequate.

Matroska is better than ogg. For example, subtitles in Matroska can be in any language of the world because it supports Unicode, ogg doesn't.

Matroska is a cross-platform, patent-free, open-source media file format, which is even newer than OGM. Matroska is not a codec (like MPEG-1, XviD, DivX, or VP3), but a container (like OGM) where you can put video(s) + audio(s) + sub(s). Supported audio formats include Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3, and AC3.

Here ya go:

http://ld-anime.faireal.net/guide/ogm-en#what

It will take a few steps but ogm is a better coantainer format than avi and friends.

And you should really look at Ogg Vorbis a little more...the file size will be the same with Ogg Vorbis as an MP3 with the same bit rate, but the Ogg Vorbis file will be higher quality.

This means you can have smaller files that sound just as good...to hear how good Ogg Vorbis files can be, try encoding a file with -q0 and you'll see what I mean (a 3-4 minute file should be ~1-1.5M)...

It uses advanced acoustic modeling to do quality based encoding...something not built into MP3 (Lame tries to approximate this)...

If you want to talk raw bit rate, Vorbis can do higher bit rates as well (640max I think...current encoders can only do a max of 320 but the format allows for it), but the real reason to use Vorbis is better sounding, smaller sized files...I mean, isn't that the ultimate goal of lossy compression???

As a matter of fact, Ogg Media (Generally VP3...sometimes XviD + Vorbis) is becoming the preferred format for some Anime Fan-Subbers...for a good look at how to do OGM, look here and here...

What's even better about Ogg Vorbis is the format allows for tuning of algorithms even now (after the format is frozen)...

You should also check out the Dare To Compare page on Xiph's own site...