Mencoder for Windows
 

Edit-I moved this topic from KDVD to ffmpeg. I forgotten where I had written it...Sorry guys :oops:

Hi guys,
@all windows users
I've recently found ffmpeg/mplayer/mencoder and after some tests I can say we could get some really good results with it.
You can find some topics about it in our forums but I cannot find any information on windows users only.
From what I have learnt until now this (m)encoder is a very powerful command line tool only lacking
compatibility with avisynth scripts and dvd2avi projects. We can only do AVI (including DivX/XviD) and VOB files to name the more popular...
But still, I think we should try more than we did so far and I think we should post our doubts, workarounds and results with it.
There's no point in making comparisons with tmpgenc, cce or mce because these are script compatible.
@all linux users
Hey, you guys have a script made up by russiansexpat. Why don't you give us some help and advise?

Here are some links:

mencoder for windows - http://armory.nicewarrior.org/projects/cygmp/

Home for mplayer project - http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

I suspect I still don't know how to use the arguments (especially vrc_buf_size, scale and expand) but here is the latest command line I used for KVCD notch matrix on MPEG2 704x576:

Wow 8O
This is (almost) exactly what i was lookin for. Thx RDS. I'm no mencoder expert, but in near future I'll doo some test and experiments with this.
Still big inconvenience is lack of using AVS scripts. Maybe someone find another solution for this (mayby another type of script). I was wondering if it is possible to use VD frame server as input for mencoder. Any ideas?

Hi Hydeus,
In fact it is a big inconvenience the avs thing.
But I think that the guys are not giving it the attention it deserves.
I remember Karl on his toes when he first tried ffmpegx on his Mac. By then he was all excited.
The same goes for a lot of guys when they first tried ffmpeg for windows compiled by Karl. The talking endured for weeks.
But things got going and after a few months we get to see the community divided because of this M$ vs *nix, mine is bi**er than yours thing...
You know, they're not excited anymore and you can see that Phil raised a question on how is the development right now and everybody started off-topic conversations.
The only guys that could give us some help right now because they're all turned on with it, are russiansexpat and the
*nix guys, but they don't waste much of their time thinking about how a M$ guy would solve his problem with M$ OS.
For them the guy simply should avoid M$ and he should join *nix brotherhood.
It's simply a shame because we really don't know how fast mencoder is against tmpg, cce or mce because it cannot read avs but we sure know it is a hell lot faster than those 3 when encoding from avi. And the quality is just great.
I guess I'm just going to keep using tmpg and having to wait 24H of encoding LOTR-TT to KDVD...
C ya

VirtualDub frame server file vdr is not a valid input file for mencoder :( Does anybody know a diferent frame server, with read of AVS files?
I found one solution, "very simple but very stupid" :lol: :
create a uncompresed (or almost loseless compression) avi file, from source file, worked out by avs script, and then feed the mencoder with that avi file. :banghead: But who wants to play with that? :screwy: ;) I give you a hint -> not me 8)
Beter search for another solution :crashed: (like temporal ignorance of low quality ;) ) -> :drink:

Hi Hydeus,
It's seams that nothing will work: VFAPI, VDub, makeAVIS.
Tried with the above 3 and it didn't work.
But that doesn't mean that there is no way we can make it work.
TMPGEnc didn't work also but someone built ReadAVS.dll and we started playing.
From my point of view tmpgenc is not an option. I know that the average PC is a 1,5Ghz CPU nowadays but I must remind us all that some guys are still stuck with <=1Ghz PCs, they use mencoder and *nix and they have superior MPEG files for their KVCDs faster than tmpgenc on M$.
More, FFMPEG and Mencoder are both free.
There's got to be a way for us to use AVS scripts with Mencoder...
Will someone help us here?

This might help people on their way to mencoder on windows.

GuiMencoder

http://www.vdsworld.com/~vuks/bin2/gulmencoder.cab

Thanks a lot Dano
I think I'll d/l it right now and tell you how it went tomorrow.
Cheers

Hey Hydeus,
Wanna play with me? :D
I swear I only mean with mencoder gui :wink:

Ok ;) What are the rules of the game? ;)
I just downloaded gui file but in couple of hours I'll have not time to test it.

BTW: Did you noticed that I've been avanced to moderator by B2H :lol:

The problem with makeavis is that ffvfw codec is not recongised by mencoder. I have been reading the man_page that came with mencoder and the filters mencoder have are pretty good. I do more tv captures than anything else and with tmpgenc, I would only need to use fluxsmooth and resize from avisynth. Denoise3d is very similar to fluxsmooth and gives me excellent results. I haven't experimented much with the other filters but it seems that the quality of filters are very similar to avisynth. I am going to try out the gui later.

Thx Tuco for a hint. I'll keep that in mind.

I tried the gui out but I am confused about how to input a text file so I could just make some preset text files. It is a good first effort though. I probably need to muck around with it some more.

Hya all
I'm having the same problem as you tuco but then it may be that I need to grab my pillow for about 8 hours or so...
I feel like I can't get up from my chair...
See you guys tomorrow.

I don't know how you guys, but I think I don't fully understand how this gui works :? With video codec -ovc lavc and parametr -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video I get avi mpeg1 file, which of cource is not a valid mpeg file ;) Any small sugestion to move forward?
And could you explain me exacly what for are this text files you want to input?

Both mplayer and mencoder sources can be file, device, network stream or pipe.
Mplayer can output into pipe (frame serve) for any other encoder, so initially I used mplayer to feed mpeg2enc
which is Linux variant of tmpgenc, see
http://dvdripping-guid.berlios.de/fo...opic.php?t=157
Mplayer/mencoder can process suntitles and vob, but I don't have experince with these, cause I don't do DVD authoring.
Also, mplayer has very powerful TV out support.
Unfortunately, mplayer/menocder man page and documentation are lacking explanation of many important parameters, so I had to test all parameters of my script and can explain them now.

Mencoder can be feed from pipe
(how it is called in windoze - bills vortex :lol: )
so most likely you can do pre-processing for mencoder by your tools.

Hi Russian friend.
Welcome to our humble M$ Mencoder topic :lol:

Do know if I followed you correctly: did you mean suntitles or subtitles?
Because what I'm really doing is KDVD and DVD.
On both Linux and M$ version or only for Penguins :?:
Gee! I really would like to get my hands on that man page you refer.
Anyway I can call it by cmd line arguments in M$ (like mencoder -h)?
Now I got completely lost :roll:
You mean "bills vortex" is the same as pipe?
Hell, I don't even know what is pipe but I think it should be like "|" in M$ batch files, is it?
So I could I use DVD2AVI and/or Avisynth for pre-processing?
Using pipe/bills vortex?
Could you give us some more hints my friend?
Because I believe only you "Penguin" guys can bail us out on this one...
Hope to hear from you guys soon.
C ya

You can find the man_page here at http://www2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel.../man_page.html. You should have had it when you downloaded mplayer I think. This should help you understand some of the filters more. For now I just make a .bat file with my presets since the GUI doesn't really do the things I would like it to.[/url]

Nice going tuco 8)
Unfortunately I won't have much time to test it before the weekend but I'll take a look at it as soon as I can.
Thks

Unfortunately putting avs script directly to mplayer for bill vortex (great name ;) ) is not as simple as it seems :( Or maybe I don't know some rule to do this work. It says LMLM4 stream format not found, no mater if it is avi source or d2v source in script.
One good plugin, only one .... is it so much to ask ;)

Pipe is same as "|" in ms batch files. You can't put the code (script) through the pipe but you can put the result of your script into pipe and out of pipe to mencoder.
Consider pipe as virtual temporary file - one prorgram output into the pipe, and other program takes input from the pipe.

I briefly checked windoze mplayer/mencoder man page - your http link http://www2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel.../man_page.html
and it looks the same as Lunix man page.

Is that a new distro :?: :arrow: Lunix :?:
Just kidding :mrgreen:

-kwag

Thanks for that link russiansexpat :)
That looks pretty neat, but what I suspected, it can't be installed on XP (if you're running NTFS) because it uses UMSDOS to mount a FAT32 partition. :(
I was about to download it, but because I use NTFS, I won't be able to run it.
Anyway, I already dual-boot in my Noteboot between XP and Knoppix 3.3 ;)

-kwag

The link has been updated:
http://www.mslinux.org/

Hi Russian,
I was never very good at "piping" in dos/Win32 also so that's probably why I'm not succeding.
Could you show me an example because I feel like I kind of understand you but I can't see any practical results.
And what do you mean by "script"? Your's bash or our's avisynth :?:
We really would like to use our avs filters instead of mencoder's.
Last but not least could you post an encoding mencoder command for a VOB 16:9 PAL(720x576)
anamorphic source with an expected output of 544x576 MPEG2 SVCD without sound and of course non anamorphic.
I sure would like to know how you crop the original 720x576 to 720x552(without the black bars on top/bottom)
encode the video and put the black bars again on the encoded output stream with mencoder filters.
I always end up with a 544x576 fullscreen image or with a 544x306 widescreen (with black bars) image.
I use "-zoom -xy 544" but that's wrong right? Maybe scale, crop, expand...I can't figure it out...
Regards

Hya Karl,
Care to join us :?: :drunkard:
I believe you understand what Russian friend said so can you try and see if avsisynth works with pipes?
Thanks

I think many of you might be surprised to learn that there already exists a powerful encoder for win32 that uses avisynth and mplayer filters. Install ffvfw and ffdshow, configure ffvfw in vdub and under "Input" select "Enable image processing" then click on "Configure". Quite a few options to play with 8O

http://www.ligh.de/software/mirrors.phtml

Hi Dano.
I see that ffvfw has an experimental MPEG encoding function. Does it based on libavcodec? Maybe this is also some way to alternative encoding. Inserting avs scripts to egz. VD and encoding by ffvfw.
Where i can find some features list of ffvfw, while I find testing is dificult without any man page.
Thx.

PS: "Enable image processing" option is innactive in my case.

http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/ffvfw.html

To enable image processing you need to have ffdshow installed and you need to tell ffdshow what codecs are supported. However, you are right in that you can use avisynth, ffvfw does decent mpeg-1 and is very configurable, haven't yet figured out how to unlock the matrix tables.

I have tried it before and it does use libavcodec but it is much slower on my machine than mencoder. The quality is about the same as mencoder as well, so if you don't care too much about speed, you can get it a try. I only use fluxsmooth and simpleresize for most of my encodes so denoise3d for mencoder is fine for me.

Hello Dano,

Thanks for the update.
I had played with this several months ago, and it always crashed.
To my surprise, I just downloaded the relevant files, AND NOW IT WORKS 8O :mrgreen:
Thanks again. It's play time :!: :D

-kwag

Hey :!:
What did I just miss :?: What did I just miss :?: 8O
Is it good? Tell me right away.
Did we come up with some way of using *.avs with mencoder :?:
Come on Karl: share it with me/us :lol:
I'll do anything to start using something as good as tmpgenc and as fast as cce/mce.
C ya

You did'nt miss much litle spider ;) Last messages have gone off topic, but while we know that ffvfw is based on libavcodec, it is only mater of test speed, if quality is equal to mencoder as Tuco says.
Unlockin matrix tables may be key thing, to produce Kmpegs (read: better picture quality ;) ). GOPs settings are available, I have no problem to configurate this. I'm start to read ffvfw man form link posted by Dano (THX).
So what do you thik Kwag, it's worth to try this :?:


edit (few minutes later): Unfortunately documentation links are broken :(

Works like a charm.
BUT the only problem, other that you can't change the matrix, is that there's no way to set MIN and MAX bitrates :(
So the bitrate fluctuations go down to 0 and above 3,000-4,000Kbps :x

-kwag

:douh:
And it looks so delicious :)
But the max bitrate can be set in "Two passes - 2nd pass" tab (I might me wrong).
And it is realy possible to go to the 0kbps, even in full static scene (egz. black screen) ?

Edit: I've mention Two passes while I still think that this is beter solution for quality and bitrate distribution (of course not in TMPG, for known reasons).

Man!
Can someone tell me how this ffdshow/ffvfw thing works?
I mean there are no docs I can read to make use of it...
Thanks

:lol:
I'm too suffer from lack of man page of ffvfw.

Download ffvfw.
Open youre script in VD(mod, avs, ...).
Select full processng mode in Video menu -> and in the same menu is compression.
Pick ffvwf MPEG-4 codec.
Choose encoder MPEGx or mpeg2enc MPEGx.
I think that the rest you'll figure youre self. This is enought for simple speed and qualitty test.
Have fun. Post youre results ;)

PS: in my opinion speed isn't the hard part of this encoder (depends much on avs script). Results are very impressive, even without notch matrixes, and gops settings. This is giving something to think in sleeples nights ;) But I'm not suffering from insomnia, so my bed is calling me ;) Good night.

Hi guys,
Feeling like a hyper noob here :oops:
Well I started VdubMod and opened my avs.
I checked the full processing option and opened the compression window.
I chose ffvfw MPEG-4 codec and pushed the Configure button.
A window titled ffvfw configuration appeared.
But I can't find anything that I can change on this window besides the boxes for input/output colorspace
and some other not so important items. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong :?:
I have both ffvfw and ffdshow installed on my pc.
Cheers

In the left upper corner, just bellow window bar, you should be able to choose type of encoder.
And in the left side of the window is white option list: Generic, Motion estimation, etc...
If only I knew how to import image to post (I'm unable to serve it), I could do a screan shot of the config window.

Then I guess my WinXP has gone nuts because I just can see uncompressed there...
Ok guys, don't u go nowhere 'cause I'll be back in 3-4 hours after a fresh XP Pro reinstall.
Then I'll give it a shot again with ffvfw/ffdshow again.
C ya

I've found solution to change custom tables :)
I'll work on this a litle, so maybe tommorow (or today in few hours), I post results and patch to ffvfw.
I also wrote email to Milan, informing that doc page is down. We see what and when will be answer.


Edit: False alarm :( I've changed tables to all zeros, and i don't se the diference in quality, so propably this will nit work this way.
If you want to try, go to registry HKCU\software\GNU\ffvfw and there are several DWORD walues named qmatrix_(inter/intra)_custom(0-15).