Mencoder encoding for DVDs

[scarletraven]

Hi... I've been trying to figure out how to use mencoder to encode videos so that I can burn them and watch them on my DVD player. I can turn them into .AVI's , but they don't work on the DVD player. I've tried changing a lot fo things, but the problem is I'm not very good at understanding almost all of the things I read about the coding. I was wondering if someone could explain or show me what to do. Or if someone could point me to a site that explains thing in a way that people like me, who aren't really smart enough to understand this stuff, can understand.

The original coding I used was this:

mencoder movie.wmv -o movie.avi -ovc lavc -oac lavc

I've added and changed different things in this code to try and make it work, I've been trying to figure it out for days, and I just don't understand it....help?

[spencerf]

this is the command I use to convert avi to mpeg I think it should work with wmv.

mencoder /home/bob/test.avi -of mpeg -vf scale=720:480,harddup -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:vcodec=mpeg2video:keyint=25:vbitrate=5000:aspect=4/3 -mpegopts format=dvd -srate 48000 -ofps 30000/1001 -o /home/bob/tv1.mpg

You then need to use a program to create the dvd structure. I would suggest dvdstyler because it is a gui program which utilized dvdauthor to help you create a nice little menu for your new dvd and will also create proper dvd structure. Then you need to burn. I would use k3b for this.

here is link for dvdstyler

[scarletraven]

Thankyou for that, it almost worked....it worked fine on mplayer, so I burned it, but there was no sound. It did fix the video though. I'm going to try to play around with it a bit more but so far I'm not having any success. Does it matter if I just burned it without using dvdstyler yet? I just wanted to make sure it was going to work first. So if anyone knows how I could make the sound work I'd much appreciate it!!

[spencerf]

I do believe it does matter if you want the dvd to play in a stand alone dvd player. You need to use dvdstyler to create the proper dvd structure so a stand alone dvd player will recognize it correctly as a dvd.

as far as sound. Do you get sound when you play the coverted mpg in mplayer? If not then you might need ac3 support for your player, not sure though.

[scarletraven]

Ah, that figures lol, I got a little too anxious. Thankyou very much, I will do that. There is sound on mplayer, it was just in the DVD player that it didn't work.

[scarletraven]

It works! Thanks very much! I just had to take out the acodec, it didn't want to work that way. Incase anyone else is having problems this is what I used:

mencoder file.avi -of mpeg -vf scale=720:480,harddup -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:keyint=25:vbitrate=5000:aspect=4/3 -mpegopts format=dvd -srate 48000 -ofps 30000/1001 -o file.mpg

I very much appreciate your help spencerf!

[spencerf]

no problem glad I could be of assistance. I actually just found this cool program called kencoder which is frontend to mencoder to be used with kd3 or at least with kde libraries. Here is a link to the homepage the current version is beta but makes converting different formats easier with a gui.

[scarletraven]

thanks, I'll have to check that out.

I've run into one more issue with converting for a DVD...I just recently did a widescreen video, I set the aspect to 16/9 but when I play it on the dvd player it's still fullscreen and looks stretched...any ideas how to fix that?

[spencerf]

what's the exact command that you used?

[scarletraven]

mencoder HackSign-28.rmvb -of mpeg -vf scale=704:304,harddup -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:keyint=25:vbitrate=5000:aspect=1 6/9 -mpegopts format=dvd -srate 48000 -ofps 30000/1001 -o hack28.mpg

If I kept the scale at 720:480, would that make a difference? I just thought of that, although I thought the first time I did it that I had left it that way, but apparently not.