Post subject: Mencoder setup
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi there. I was wondering if some of the encoding wizkids on this site could help me out a little. A long time ago, I think somewhere mid-2006, Bisqwit sent me a script he used for encoding. I messed around with it a little and had a good single-command encoder that way. The script is here. However, it doesn't work anymore. I think it's because x264 changed so much that some of the old arguments don't work anymore. Here's what happens when I run the script (note: I already have a tempfile.mp3 by then). So, can anyone give me some pointers on what to do? Basically, the point of the script is to make tempfile.mp3 when it isn't available (it does this perfectly), then to do a two-pass encode with x264, integrating the mp3 file. (I want to be able to make MKV files but I've been told it's best to first encode an AVI and then put it into a new container.)
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Former player
Joined: 11/6/2004
Posts: 833
Are you sure this script is correct? I can't find an -x264encopts parameter. You do need one, if nothing else to specify a bitrate, qp or crf setting.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Well, I'm not entirely sure. -x264encopts seems to be a valid Mplayer option, according to Google, but I'm thinking that most of the incompatibility is due to this script being pretty old. Some of the arguments have likely been replaced by others. Maybe you have some good resource where I can see the arguments that I can pass to x264?
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Their manual page, perhaps? It's what I used to figure out certain things.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Editor, Skilled player (1941)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3247
I've had problems with -x264encopts in older versions of MEncoder; specifically saying that it is not a valid option (despite appearing in the manual). I don't know about newer versions.
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
It's not a question of version. It's a question of whether x264 support has been compiled into mencoder or not. By default it's not compiled (if you just get the basic mencoder source); you need to download the ffmpeg (or whatever it was) package separately in order to compile mencoder with that support. It may just be that you had a version of mencoder without x286 support compiled in.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
I think he meant that some options/switches have been changed since older versions (such as the motion estimation option, which I believe was a number and is now letters, or vice versa)
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
It's not a question of version. It's a question of whether x264 support has been compiled into mencoder or not. By default it's not compiled (if you just get the basic mencoder source); you need to download the ffmpeg (or whatever it was) package separately in order to compile mencoder with that support.
Yeah, what I did was I first got x264, then I got LAME, and then I compiled MEncoder. I'm pretty sure I did those things right. Encoding is harder than I thought it would be. I guess I'll be trying to figure stuff out using that manual, thanks for the link. Or if anyone has some kind of starting point for me to mess around with (like, a script that you use or would fit my needs), that would be great.