plz help! mencoder .rm > xvid

[david1103]

hello all,

this is my first post, so plz be gentle!

I would like to convert a realmedia .rm video lecture file into xvid so that everyone can see it without having to mess about with realmedia's crappy format.

From what i can learn the best tool for this is mencoder. The only xvid work i have done so far is with autogk, so i am afraid i am still a bit ignorant about it. Could anyone be so kind as to suggest the best mencoder command parameters to do the job? A few points;

1. i found another thread suggesting that the resulting file might not be windows compatible. Is this fixed? the file should be fully compatible, esp for standalone players (as autogk)

2. it is a 46 minute .rm file of 80 meg. I would like to get the quality to be about the same as well as the file size.

Any help much appreciated!

David

[celtic_druid]

XviD in mencoder basically supports the same params as XviD in autogk including profiles so for standalone compatibility you can use the dxn profiles. You might want to check out megui. You can use the gui to play with the settings whilst seeing the command line. Also the mencoder docs are worth looking at.

[CWR03]

You probably won't like the result you'd get from an 80 MB file size at 46 minutes long using XviD or DivX. The audio alone would have to be 15-20 MB just to be able to hear and understand it, which doesn't leave a lot for the video. You would also need to have codecs installed on any computer on which you'd wish to view it. If you want compatibility and some semblance of quality, I'd recommend Windows Media Video.

[david1103]

thanks for the suggestions. problem is that the answers are on too advanced a level for me. i have searched everywhere for just an example of a command line to convert .rm to xvid using mencoder. can't find any! the on-line manual does examples for divx, but not xvid.

i can't find any info on how to apply dxn profiles.

in reply to cwr03, the source .rm file is the only one i can get. If you are interested, it is here http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html . It is poor quality, i only want to make the xvid the same quality... are you saying that realmedia will be much better quality at the same file size?

just to say, can anyone give me a sample command line that would do the job? just a straight conversion using best quality and keeping the file size about the same?

If not, maybe mencoder is too much for me. Any other tools to do the job that are free and easy to use?

CHEERS!!!!!!!!

[celtic_druid]

-xvidencopts profile=dxnhandheld
dxnportntsc
dxnhtntsc
dxnhtpal
dxnhdtv

If you had the original source then getting the same poor quality wouldn't be that hard. Problem is that when you have a crappy source you waste lots of bits preserving the crap whilst trying not to introduce new crap.

mencoder is actually pretty easy to use. So xvidencopts aren't covered in the docs (I got the profiles from ve_xvid4.c)?

[CWR03]

in reply to cwr03, the source .rm file is the only one i can get. It is poor quality, i only want to make the xvid the same quality... are you saying that realmedia will be much better quality at the same file size?Actually what I was trying to say is that Windows Media fulfills your two criteria: "so that everyone can see it," and doesn't use "realmedia's crappy format." It would play in virtually any computer running Windows and rivals RealMedia quality at the same file size. Regardless, any conversion will cost quality, and probably a lot.

[boombastic]

I successfully converted some .rm into avi with the script suggested in this discussion:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=103571

you must install avisynth,then copy those lines intop notepad, obviously change the path and filename, and save the file as "something.avs".
Open that .avs with virtualdub and you should be able to elaborate with xvid the video and mp3 the audio part.

[david1103]

Cheers everyone! Thanks for the help, will try your suggestions tonight...