MEncoder-Frontend for x264 encoding (update: 2006-09-17) [Archive]

View Full Version : MEncoder-Frontend for x264 encoding (update: 2006-09-17)

LoRd_MuldeR

20th March 2006, 15:36

Note: This tool is outdated and I doubt I will ever release an update!
I highly recommend to use Avidemux (http://tinyurl.com/2jsqqf) or some more up-to-date MEncoder front-end instead.

MEncoder264 is a front-end for MEncoder, that is dedicated to x264.
Different x264 profiles (plus custom profiles) and various video/auido filters are available.
Source can be any media that plays in MPlayer, which includes Video-DVD.
The current version supports AVI output plus MP4 muxing via MP4Box (experimental).

http://img487.imageshack.us/img487/1340/shotmencoder2645ra.gif

killerhex

21st March 2006, 00:59

the program need iconv.dll and intl.dll to work

LoRd_MuldeR

21st March 2006, 02:47

the program need iconv.dll and intl.dll to work

You talk about the MPlayer/MEncoder?
Depends on what build you use. Some builds require those DLLs...

The GUI application does not need any DLLs

Try celtic's latest build. The .7z includes all you need:
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/mplayer/

Or this one, which has some additional patches included:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=802171#post802171

Romario

21st March 2006, 17:13

Lord_Mulder, your little frontend is very buggy, you should clean the source code from bugs.

LoRd_MuldeR

21st March 2006, 17:25

Lord_Mulder, your little frontend is very buggy, you should clean the source code from bugs.

Please tell me details if you notice any bugs, so I can check and maybe fix that :)

hellfred

21st March 2006, 18:43

Hi LoRd_M
I am just playing around with your GUI on my Laptop (WinXP SP2, 1280x800 display). As my monitor aspect is 1:1.6, the preview of a DVD is stretched in the horizontal achses. This is suboptiomal. One can fix the playback of mplayer using the option -moitoraspect 1.6 for every call of mplayer, or put monitoraspect=1.6 in the config file. But there will be some users of your GUI, that are not familiar with mplayer / mencoder and do not know of this trick. Therefore I suggest you to allow the user to set their monitor aspect in your GUI (evt. with a big fat warning, that this option is just to correct preview output).
This is taken von mplayer manpage:−monitoraspect <ratio> (also see −aspect)

Set the aspect ratio of your monitor or TV screen.

EXAMPLE:

−monitoraspect 4:3 or 1.3333
−monitoraspect 16:9 or 1.7777Otherwise I did not encouter any problems while clicking on your GUI. I did not do any real encoding with it yet. Nice peace of work. If you want to get added to the list of projects on mplayerhq.hu, I can drop a line on mplayer-cygwin mailing list for you.

Hellfred

LoRd_MuldeR

21st March 2006, 18:50

If you want to get added to the list of projects on mplayerhq.hu, I can drop a line on mplayer-cygwin mailing list for you.

If you think my little GUI is worth it, why not...
And I'll have a look at the monitor issue ASAP.

LoRd_MuldeR

21st March 2006, 20:27

Okay, hellfred
The -monitoraspect param will now be set to the correct value.
This is done automatically, so there's no new option.

hellfred

21st March 2006, 21:43

Works great here on my laptop. Really cool. Thankd for this feature!
May I ask, what your plan for this tool of yours is. Further enhancing it or leaving it the way it is?
I had a look at most of the win32 mencoder forntends listed on mplayerhq.hu, looking for one for easy dvd backup. I wanted to have one that will help me with cropping and resizing of the dvd, when black bars have to be removed. Just the way e. g. StaxRip works.
There the cropping parameters are auto-detected, the user can override it in a nice intuitiv crop dialog. Further on there is a slider for resizing the cropped output. When one moves the slider, different resolution (with width and hights modolo 16) are presented together with the resulting aspect error, so the user knows how much the picture gets distorted for the different resolutions. I really like StaxRip for this feature, but as I mainly do one pass cfr encodes with x264 I dislike having to copy/decript dvd source to hd before encoding. This means additional processing time and huge intermediat files. Using mencoder, there is neither the need for decryptiong the dvd beforehand nor for intermediat files.
MeWig is supposed to do auto-cropping and resizing suggestions. But development of MeWig is paused, and for me the automatism of cropping and resizing fails on main titles of dvds. (It works for reencoding avis and single chapters of the dvd, but for the full movie it just consumes CPU cycles and gives no results). And I think it can not keep anarmorphic material anamorphic, always rescaling it to square pixels.
So now the question: Did you plan to enhance your GUI to help the user with cropping and resizing? This feature would make it my No. 1 DVD backup solution!

Hellfred

P.S.: Have a look at the German gleitz/doom9 forum for selurs x26x guid and manual for a nice decription of further x264 options for high quality encodes.man page (http://forum.gleitz.info/showthread.php?t=26187&highlight=x264) und Wissenswertes rund um x264 (http://www.flaskmpeg.info/board/thread.php?postid=54931)

LoRd_MuldeR

21st March 2006, 23:27

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 09:25

One thing I'll do, is adding some x264 profiles, because at the moment it will always encode with high (slow) settings. Other things might be added if people ask for them...
I was already wondering if mencoder is starte with more x264encopts as one can set via the option tab ("denoise"=inloop filter? and adaptiv quantization). Is there a way to learn what you actually use to start mencoder?
From the error message that I recieve from my testings right now I can see that you enable subq 7. My "homegrown" mencoder buids do not support it yet. So I have to update x264 and rebuild mencoder, but that is ok. But with the verbosity level you use for mencoder, the parameters are not repeated in mencoders output.
Addind Sharktooths profiled is a great idea.
Here I have another one:
If you do not want to update your entire GUI with every new and interesting switch for x264 and mencoder, you could add textboxes for those. One for general mencoder options, and one for x264encopts, that are not yet supported. The user could input every not yet supported parameter he would like to use for the encoding, and your GUI can add them to the mencoder command line. That is, if the user has input anything to the textboxes.
Additional -x264encopts options one evt. wants to test/use (already existing)
turbo=0:bime:psnr
Additional mencoder options one evt. wants to test/use (already existing)
-info name=anyname:subject=MyBirthdayPartyVideo
Those are just examples to illustrate what i suggest.
It is yours to decide if this is worth the time for programming. I woud certanly use such a featur, especially as yout gui provides me with the possibility to encode only some frames. That is ideal for tweaking x264 options on the source at hand.
By the way, some ppl on this list would prefere getting a raw video stream to mux it with mp4box later on.

Hellfred

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 10:17

I wanted to check the autocop feature.
For an avi without black bars, autocrop suggests to crop some lines on the hight to make it modolo 16. Well done.
On a dvd that does have a very thin black bar (maybe one or two pixel) on the top and bottom, auto crop suggestes to crop 8 lines form top and bottom each, so modolo 16 is kept. (Der Untergang)
The DVD that MeWig could not process, make troubles with your GUI, too. But after further investigation, i think that the DVD structure is messed up. DVD in question is "28 Tage" (28 days?) with Sandra Bullock. Yet again! Pressing preview will make the GUI vanish/minimized and the DVD spinn up, but the preview will never appear. In the task manager I can see mplayer idling around, consuming no cpu cycles at all. So I started playback of this DVD from cmd.exe:
D:\Software\MEncoder264\MEncoder264.2006-03-22>mplayer.exe -dvd-device e:\ dvd:/
/ -v
MPlayer dev-CVS-060313-18:33-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium M Dothan (Family: 6, Stepping: 8)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.

get_path('codecs.conf') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplay
er/codecs.conf'
Reading D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/codecs.conf: Can'
t open 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/codecs.conf': No
such file or directory
Reading /opt/mplayer/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open '/opt/mplayer/etc/mplay
er/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Using built-in default codecs.conf.
CommandLine: '-dvd-device' 'e:\' 'dvd://' '-v'
get_path('font/font.desc') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mp
layer/font/font.desc'
font: can't open file: D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/fo
nt/font.desc
font: can't open file: /opt/mplayer/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Using MMX (with tiny bit MMX2) Optimized OnScreenDisplay
Using Windows native timing
get_path('input.conf') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplaye
r/input.conf'
Can't open input config file D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mpla
yer/input.conf: No such file or directory
Can't open input config file /opt/mplayer/etc/mplayer/input.conf: No such file o
r directory
Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config
get_path('.conf') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/.co
nf'
Playing dvd://.
get_path('sub/') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/sub/
'
WINSOCK2 init: 0
URL: dvd://
Reading disc structure, please wait...
There are 8 titles on this DVD.
There are 28 chapters in this DVD title.
There are 1 angles in this DVD title.
DVD successfully opened.
[open] audio stream: 0 audio format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 128
[open] audio stream: 1 audio format: ac3 (5.1) language: de aid: 129
[open] audio stream: 2 audio format: ac3 (stereo) language: en aid: 130
[open] audio stream: 3 audio format: ac3 (5.1) language: en aid: 131
[open] number of audio channels on disk: 4.
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 0 language: en
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 1 language: de
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 2 language: nl
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 3 language: ar
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 4 language: bg
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 5 language: cs
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 6 language: da
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 7 language: fi
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 8 language: el
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 9 language: iw
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 10 language: hi
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 11 language: hu
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 12 language: is
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 13 language: no
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 14 language: pl
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 15 language: sv
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 16 language: tr
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 17 language: de
[open] subtitle ( sid ): 18 language: nl
[open] number of subtitles on disk: 19
DVD start cell: 0 pack: 0x0-0xF291
DVD start=0 end=2568660
STREAM: [null] dvd://
STREAM: Description: DVD stream
STREAM: Author:
STREAM: Comment:
DVD Seek! lba=0x0 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
Checking for YUV4MPEG2
ASF_check: not ASF guid!
Checking for NuppelVideo
Checking for REAL
Checking for SMJPEG
Searching demuxer type for filename dvd:// ext: (null)
DVD Seek! lba=0x0 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
Checking for Nullsoft Streaming Video
DVD Seek! lba=0x0 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
Checking for MOV
Checking for VIVO
header block 1 size: 0
Checking for PVA
Checking for MPEG-TS...
TRIED UP TO POSITION 75266, FOUND 47, packet_size= 0, SEEMS A TS? 0
DVD Seek! lba=0x24 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
DVD Seek! lba=0x0 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
Checking for LMLM4 Stream Format
Invalid packet in LMLM4 stream: ch=0 size=1140851708
LMLM4 Stream Format not found
system stream synced at 0xD (13)!
==> Found video stream: 0
DVD Seek! lba=0x3986F cell=3 packs: 0x30072-0x4E074
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
==> Found audio stream: 131
==> Found audio stream: 129
==> Found audio stream: 128
==> Found audio stream: 130
DVD Seek! lba=0x730DF cell=5 packs: 0x71C5F-0x7F912
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
==> Found subtitle: 16
==> Found subtitle: 15
==> Found subtitle: 14
==> Found subtitle: 13
==> Found subtitle: 12
==> Found subtitle: 11
==> Found subtitle: 10
==> Found subtitle: 9
==> Found subtitle: 8
==> Found subtitle: 7
==> Found subtitle: 6
==> Found subtitle: 5
==> Found subtitle: 4
==> Found subtitle: 3
==> Found subtitle: 2
==> Found subtitle: 1
==> Found subtitle: 0
==> Found subtitle: 18
==> Found subtitle: 17
At this point mplayer takes a long pause (approx 22 seconds) with the same symptons as mentioned above (spinning tray and mplayer not eating any CPU cycles). Then it continuse with the following output and starts the playback:

--- END OF CELL !!! ---
DVD next cell: 6 pack: 0x7F913-0xAA18CAnd another 2 Second pause

Too many audio packets in the buffer: (4096 in 8257536 bytes).
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
ds_fill_buffer: EOF reached (stream: video)
DVD Seek! lba=0x0 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
MPEG-PS file format detected.
Searching for sequence header... OK!
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x576 (aspect 3) 25.000 fps 9800.0 kbps (1225.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:2 fourcc:0x10000002 size:720x576 fps:25.00 ftime:=0.0400
get_path('sub/') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplayer/sub/
'
get_path('default.sub') -> 'D:/Software/MEncoder264/MEncoder264.2006-03-22/mplay
er/default.sub'
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
dec_audio: Allocating 3840 bytes for input buffer.
dec_audio: Allocating 6144 + 65536 = 71680 bytes for output buffer.
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
AC3: 5.1 (3f+2r+lfe) 48000 Hz 448.0 kbit/s
A52 flags before a52_frame: 0x2A
A52 flags after a52_frame: 0xA
Using MMX optimized resampler
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 448.0 kbit/29.17% (ratio: 56000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
<vo_directx><INFO>checking primary surface
<vo_directx><FORMAT PRIMARY>14 BGR32 supported
<vo_directx><INFO>testing supported overlay pixelformats
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>0 YV12 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>1 I420 not supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>2 IYUV not supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>3 YVU9 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>4 YUY2 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>5 UYVY supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>6 BGR8 not supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>7 RGB15 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>8 BGR15 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>9 RGB16 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>10 BGR16 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>11 RGB24 not supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>12 BGR24 not supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>13 RGB32 supported
<vo_directx><FORMAT OVERLAY>14 BGR32 supported
<vo_directx><INFO>Your card supports 10 of 15 overlayformats
<vo_directx><INFO>hardware supports overlay
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 576 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
Trying filter chain: vo
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
SwScale params: -1 x -1 (-1=no scaling)
Trying filter chain: scale vo
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try adding the scale filter, e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm: libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/s16le -> 0Hz/0ch/??...
[libaf] Adding filter dummy
[dummy] Was reinitialized: 48000Hz/2ch/s16le
[dummy] Was reinitialized: 48000Hz/2ch/s16le
ao_dsound: Output Devices:
0 Primõrer Soundtreiber <--
1 Realtek HD Audio output
ao_dsound: DirectSound initialized
ao_dsound: Samplerate:48000Hz Channels:2 Format:s16le
ao_dsound: Buffersize:192000 bytes (1000 msec)
ao_dsound: primary buffer created
ao_dsound: secondary (stream)buffer created
AO: [dsound] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
AO: Description: Windows DirectSound audio output
AO: Author: Gabor Szecsi <deje@miki.hu>
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/s16le -> 48000Hz/2ch/s16le...
[dummy] Was reinitialized: 48000Hz/2ch/s16le
[dummy] Was reinitialized: 48000Hz/2ch/s16le
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 576 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
Trying filter chain: vo
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO Config (720x576->1024x576,flags=0,'MPlayer',0x32315659)
VO: [directx] 720x576 => 1024x576 Planar YV12
VO: Description: Directx DDraw YUV/RGB/BGR renderer
VO: Author: Sascha Sommer <saschasommer@freenet.de>
<vo_directx><INFO>overlay with format YV12 created
*** [vo] Allocating mp_image_t, 720x576x12bpp YUV planar, 622080 bytes
DVD Seek! lba=0x6265 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
DVD Seek! lba=0x5FB4 cell=0 packs: 0x0-0xF291
Angle-seek synced by cell/vob IDN search!
*** [vo] Allocating mp_image_t, 720x576x12bpp YUV planar, 622080 bytes
*** [vo] Allocating mp_image_t, 720x576x12bpp YUV planar, 622080 bytes
Uninit audio filters... 0.004 ct: 0.197 77/ 77 10% 3% 13.9% 3 0
[libaf] Removing filter dummy
uninit audio: liba52
uninit video: libmpeg2
WINSOCK2 uninit
ao_dsound: DirectSound uninitialized

Exiting... (Quit)

D:\Software\MEncoder264\MEncoder264.2006-03-22>
The problem persists when I ask for the first title of the DVD (mplayer.exe dvd://1) but seams to go away for title 2 (mplayer.exe dvd://2) which is a much shorte trailer for the move contained on the dvd. If it is because the bug in the dvd structure does not harm the playback of title #2 or scanning the entire title is much faster as the trailer is much shorte, I do not know. Trying to preview title #2 from your GUI fails, too. (GUI gets minimized, no preview showing up, mplayer.exe not eating any CPU cycles). But at least after some 20 seconds the GUI reappears. Fot title #3 (another trailer) I get a preview after waiting some 10 seconds.
Swithing back to title 2 on the gui will lead to no spinning up anymore, and the GUI gets minimized and return after just one second. Strange problem!
I guess: MPlayer has some kind of workarounds set for this currupted DVD that are not triggert when started for preview. Do you use MPlayers the slave mode? This is something to post at MPlayer mailing list.

Hellfred

LoRd_MuldeR

22nd March 2006, 13:41

Seems like that DVD is causing the problem. Maybe it has some kind of "copy-protection" on it, that MPlayer can't handle correctly. Why there is a different behavior between clicking the "Prieview" button and starting it manually I don't know. Are you sure you used the exactly same build both times? I don't use -slave in Preview mode. Only switches used are -dvd-device f:\VIDEO_TS and dvd://1 plus -alang de to select the right audio stream. Maybe the last one makes the difference, since you did not use it when you started it manually. Did you try to copy that DVD to your hard-drive first and then play/encode it? Might be a workarround for that DVD... I tested various of my DVDs and never had a problem like that. There was a little problem with older MPlayer/MEncoder builds, which made the total percentage display wrong. This means I got 100% after only 20min of a 2hours movie were encoded. Encoding did continue and MEncoder displayed something like 384% in the end. But this problem seems to be fixed in the latest build.

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 14:32

Seems like that DVD is causing the problem. Maybe it has some kind of "copy-protection" on it, that MPlayer can't handle correctly.
There is not note that the dvd is copy-protected. The source of mplayer was last updated less than a week ago (13.03.2006).
Are you sure you used the exactly same build both times? I don't use -slave in Preview mode. Only switches used are -dvd-device f:\VIDEO_TS and dvd://1 plus -alang de to select the right audio stream. Maybe the last one makes the difference, since you did not use it when you started it manually.Yes, I did use the exactly same mplayer.exe that your gui uses, just from within cmd.exe. Adding -alang de to the cmd line die not change the behavior of cmd line invocation (spinning up, pause, start of playback).
Did you try to copy that DVD to your hard-drive first and then play/encode it? I will have to test that.

Hellfred

EDIT: I have to state more precisely what the GUI dose when I want it to preview the main movie (selecting title 1 chapter 1 in the correspondig dialog). When I press preview, your GUI does vanisch. It does not get minimized to system tray.
But hell, what I am talking about. After several tryes, the preview of the main title showed up and autocrop got its values. Really strange one. I bet the next time i load the DVD, it will fail once again. :(

LoRd_MuldeR

22nd March 2006, 15:55

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 22:22

Sounds to me like a bug in MPlayer I encountered before. But if I look at the log you posted, your build of MPlayer seems to be outdated (CVS-060313). Please get the latest build from celtic_druid (CVS-060321) and try again. This one works fine for me :)

http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/mplayer/
Hey, I have been building my mplayer/mencoder binaries for years, I will never ever lower myself to dl a binary from somebody else :D
I will do the four necesary steps to updat mplayer today.But looking at cvs log of mplayerhq.hu, I guess the possibility fo something being broken just now is quite high...
I just want to ask you some necessary information for submitting your project to mplayerhq.hu. Usually the name of the project is given and a link to its homepage. Shall that be this thread, or do you want to present your GUI somewhere else?

Hellfred

LoRd_MuldeR

22nd March 2006, 22:47

Hey, I have been building my mplayer/mencoder binaries for years, I will never ever lower myself to dl a binary from somebody else :D
I will do the four necesary steps to updat mplayer today.But looking at cvs log of mplayerhq.hu, I guess the possibility fo something being broken just now is quite high...
I just want to ask you some necessary information for submitting your project to mplayerhq.hu. Usually the name of the project is given and a link to its homepage. Shall that be this thread, or do you want to present your GUI somewhere else?

Hellfred

If you still think it's worth it, you might post a link to my homepage (http://mulder.at.gg/) and I'll add the program there. Linking to this thread maybe is a bad idea, since you never know when your threads are closed or when you get banned/suspended (especially if you mention the word "VfW" now and then ^^).

I still think you should make a new build of MEncoder/MPlayer from the CVS asap or at least try the latest celtic build. Only to check if the problem you described above has been fixed. If the problem is still there, we'll have to look for a solution...

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 23:02

If you still think it's worth it, you might post a link to my homepage (http://mulder.at.gg/) and I'll add the program there. Linking to this thread maybe is a bad idea, since you never know when your threads are closed or when you get banned/suspended (especially if you mention the word "VfW" now and then ^^). Jehova!Jehova!Jehova! :)
Your GUI is light, but quite nice and easy to use. Just compare it to other win32 mencoder guis yourself.

I still think you should make a new build of MEncoder/MPlayer from the CVS asap or at least try the latest celtic build. Only to check if the problem you described above has been fixed. If the problem is still there, we'll have to look for a solution... Uhm, lets seelibavcodec/libavcodec.a(xvid_rc.o):xvid_rc.c:(.text+0x1e): undefined reference to `mkstemp'
libavcodec/libavcodec.a(xvid_rc.o):xvid_rc.c:(.text+0x26d): undefined reference to `mkstemp'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mplayer.exe] Error 1 Looks like I need to get xvid 1.1, too (or just disable it)

Hellfred

I have just disabled xvid for this compile (I still have a xvid 1.1 beta 2 installed) and tryed opening the problematic DVD from within the gui once more. No luck again: Your gui fanishes, the dvd drives spinns up and that's it. I have been waiting for the preview for approx 5 minutes now - and just killed mplayer.exe via taskmanager. Now I try to open the dvd directly from cmd.exe with parameters -dvd-device e:\ dvd://1 -alnag de -v, and the dvd will open after the usual pause and error message.

EDIT: Oh yes, this one can drive you nuts. You think, hey, in cmd.exe I usually ask for no spcific language or for de, while the GUI defaults to en. So lets try with -alang en from en and expect it to fail. But it will start. Then I go bak to the GUI just to see that now the preview starts both for english and german soundtrack fine. Looks like mencoder is learning how to handle this DVD after the first successfull access to the main movi via cmd.exe. But no chance if you start from the GUI.
/me giving up.

LoRd_MuldeR

22nd March 2006, 23:27

Okay, I've added MEncoder264 to the projects on my homepage.

hellfred

22nd March 2006, 23:46

I have just send the mail to the mplayer cygwin mailing lists, dedicated to the window port of mplayer/mencoder and its win32 frontends. Soon your project will be listed on mplayerhq.hu :)

Hellfred

killerhex

24th March 2006, 17:31

i have a 1ghz 256mb ram which build of mplyer would be good for me

LoRd_MuldeR

24th March 2006, 20:30

i have a 1ghz 256mb ram which build of mplyer would be good for me

Use the build that suits your type of CPU or use one with runtime CPU detection.
Last one would be slower of course.

CPU clock and RAM size don't matter for choosing the right build ^^

killerhex

25th March 2006, 13:35

how do i chose .mkv container the encodes are coming out .avi when i encode to x264 i like mkv container better

and nice work on the gui

celtic_druid

25th March 2006, 13:49

mencoder has a mkv demuxer only. Same goes for libavformat, not that I would really recommend -of lavf anyway.

LoRd_MuldeR

25th March 2006, 16:19

how do i chose .mkv container the encodes are coming out .avi when i encode to x264 i like mkv container better

and nice work on the gui

All you can do is this:
Take the created AVI, extract the audio/video stream and remux it to MP4 with MP4Box. It's also possible to let MEncoder output raw streams instead of AVI container, but then you'll have to mux it manually.
Maybe I'll add automated MP4 output via MP4Box. Would that help?

killerhex

26th March 2006, 07:54

yes it would help

LoRd_MuldeR

26th March 2006, 14:25

yes it would help

I'll do ASAP, but ATM I'm busy :o

hellfred

4th April 2006, 15:25

LoRd_MuldeR

4th April 2006, 18:36

Hi LoRd_MuldeR
Some times ago I got feedback from MPlayerHQ.hu concerning adding your little GUI. It was:
>... it's impossible to link to the project
> directly.
So if you want it mentioned, it would be good if you could provide a link to the project on your webspace.

Hellfred

The direct download links can be found on my homepage...
If one of the links didn't work, maybe the server was busy. For me they seem to work fine.

hellfred

5th April 2006, 12:01

The direct download links can be found on my homepage...
If one of the links didn't work, maybe the server was busy. For me they seem to work fine.
Diego wants to try to link to the project page of your GUI directly, not to the binaries. And that is impossible, as any deep links get redirected to your starting page. Try e. g. http://free.pages.at/borschdfresser/public/home/html/projects.html

Hellfred

LoRd_MuldeR

5th April 2006, 19:24

Understood.

I changed the site to allow deep links. But I can't upload the new files currently, because the server is out of disk-space and rejects all uploads. Need to wait until they fix the problem...

//EDIT

Uploaded now :)

hellfred

5th April 2006, 20:58

LoRd_MuldeR

10th April 2006, 02:47

*UPDATE*

Added MP4 output and some x264 profiles :cool:

hellfred

11th April 2006, 20:32

Hi MuldeR
I saw that mplayer got a fix for opening DVD's under MinGW that might have been the cause for the infinite delay of preview that I noticed.
So I have updated mplayer/mencoder and your GUI.
But version 1.0.1.0 from the mirrow has a bug:
When opening the DVD and trying to preview it, the -along switch gets illegal arguments
MPlayer dev-CVS-060411-18:59-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium M Dothan (Family: 6, Stepping: 8)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2

Unknown option on the command line: -alangde,en
Setting process priority: belownormal
MPlayer dev-CVS-060411-18:59-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium M Dothan (Family: 6, Stepping: 8)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2

Unknown option on the command line: -alangen,en
Setting process priority: belownormal
MPlayer dev-CVS-060411-18:59-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium M Dothan (Family: 6, Stepping: 8)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2

Unknown option on the command line: -alangnl,en
Setting process priority: belownormal
MPlayer dev-CVS-060411-18:59-3.4.4 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium M Dothan (Family: 6, Stepping: 8)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2

Unknown option on the command line: -alangfr,en
Setting process priority: belownormal
First attempt was to get German soundtrack. "de" gets added without any whitespace after -alang, followed by ",en".
Second attempt was to get English soundtrack. This time "en" gets added without any whitespaces after -alang, followed again by another ",en". Same happens with Netherland and French soundtrack.

Hellfred

killerhex

12th April 2006, 00:51

can you make one with xvid

LoRd_MuldeR

12th April 2006, 03:19

can you make one with xvid

Nope. This GUI is for x264, XviD support is not planned ATM.

LoRd_MuldeR

12th April 2006, 03:20

*UPDATE*

v1.0.1.1

1. Fixed DVD bug reported by hellfred
2. Fixed 2-pass encoding (broken in last version)

LoRd_MuldeR

12th April 2006, 17:16

*Update*

v1.0.1.2

1. Fixed auto-crop for new MPlayer builds
2. Made "Fast first pass" optional
3. Some changes to MP4 output
4. Minor bugfixes

rhys87

16th April 2006, 14:16

great program for people new to x264 encoding, i was wondering what the quality setting has the x264 settings at. Like motion search, etc.... It would be good if the same profiles that are used in MeGUI and StaxRip could be put into this program.

LoRd_MuldeR

16th April 2006, 15:47

Do we really need that many profiles ???
I want to keep things simple. This is what I got this far:

Insane:
frameref=16:bframes=3:me=4:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0
:bime:b_adapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=2
:nofast_pskip:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv:4x4mv:8x8dct

Quality:
frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0
:bime:b_adapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1
:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv:4x4mv:8x8dct

Intermediate:
frameref=3:bframes=0:me=2:subq=5:nobrdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0
:nobime:nob_adapt:cabac:nob_pyramid:noweight_b:nomixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=0
:noi4x4:noi8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv:no4x4mv:no8x8dct

Fast:
frameref=1:bframes=0:me=1:subq=1:nobrdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0
:nobime:nob_adapt:nocabac:nob_pyramid:noweight_b:nomixed_refs:nochroma_me:trellis=0
:noi4x4:noi8x8:no8x8mv:nob8x8mv:no4x4mv:no8x8dct

rhys87

16th April 2006, 16:30

oh ok, thanks for the details. Its just that the quality setting takes ages for me, beautiful results though :)

LoRd_MuldeR

16th April 2006, 17:21

oh ok, thanks for the details. Its just that the quality setting takes ages for me, beautiful results though :)

I recommend "quality", because it uses the full power of x264.
Of course it's much slower then ASP-Codecs like XviD/DivX...

LoRd_MuldeR

16th April 2006, 22:37

*Update*

v1.0.1.3

1. Added new option: "Output framerate" *
2. Suppressing "skiped/duplicated frame" messages **

* Required to properly encode WMV files and other VFR media
** Hopefully avoids heavy CPU load in the GUI application

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 04:06

*Update*

v1.0.1.4

New style of encoding GUI:

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2117/newgui2mg.gif

celtic_druid

17th April 2006, 07:20

In my mencoder builds using -noskip should prevent skipped frames.

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 10:37

In my mencoder builds using -noskip should prevent skipped frames.

Thanks for the info :)

But is this a good idea? For example if I encode a WMV file, then MPlayer/MEncoder detects a framerate of 1000 fps. So encoding without "-ofps" is a bad idea. With "-ofps 25" I get a lot of skipped or duplicated frames, but the resulting files plays really fine. How would MEncoder change a variable framerate to 25fps without skipping/duplicating frames? Can't imagine how this could work without destroying A/V sync...

But I will do some testing ASAP!

celtic_druid

17th April 2006, 12:24

stax76

17th April 2006, 12:33

Maybe you'll like this nice screenshot freeware (http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html).

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 12:34

Well for your purposes I guess it isn't that usefull, but if you had say an ogm @ 23.976fps with vorbis audio and wanted to convert to an avi @ 23.976fps with mp3 audio, then you run mencoder.exe -ovc copy -oac mp3lame input.ogm -o output.avi and get a bunch of skipped frames. If you add -noskip, then the output has just as many frames as the input @ the same rate.

Just tried it. Seems to work nice, even with WMV files.
I'm not sure how it works, but it does :D

Will be added to new version ASAP.

BTW: celtic_druid = most helpful user @ doom9 http://www.soadfans.de/forum/images/armageddon/smilies/2%20(4).gif

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 12:38

Maybe you'll like this nice screenshot freeware (http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html).

Good utility. I'm going to use that one in the future :cool:

celtic_druid

17th April 2006, 13:15

Should point out that with a lot of mencoder builds, I don't think -noskip will have any effect. Well at least it does in some cases, but in the above example I gave it wouldn't.

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 13:33

Should point out that with a lot of mencoder builds, I don't think -noskip will have any effect. Well at least it does in some cases, but in the above example I gave it wouldn't.

Well, I only tried with your build. And it had an effect:
The "Skipped frame!" messages disappeard, plus the resulting video seems to be fine.

LoRd_MuldeR

17th April 2006, 19:34

*Update*

v1.0.1.5

1. Added new option: "Do not skip frames" *
2. Added "Shutdown computer when completed" feature
3. Minor bugfixes

* Not sure in what circumstances it works :confused:
But for me it seems to work fine with Celtic Druid's MEncoder builds...

rhys87

18th April 2006, 06:15

when saving the output as mp4 and using FAAC as audio, the audio doesnt work in VLC player it shows there is a audio track but i can't hear anything.

LoRd_MuldeR

18th April 2006, 15:35

when saving the output as mp4 and using FAAC as audio, the audio doesnt work in VLC player it shows there is a audio track but i can't hear anything.

Yes, I can reproduce the problem.
It's not only VLC Player, same with MPlayer and MPC (ffdshow) :(

So the file is broken in some way.
I don't know if MEncoder/FAAC is the problem or MP4Box :confused:

rhys87

18th April 2006, 15:46

ive had problems with FAAC before, is it possible to use NAAC?

LoRd_MuldeR

18th April 2006, 15:59

ive had problems with FAAC before, is it possible to use NAAC?

Nope. AFAIK FAAC is the only OpenSource AAC encoder available, so there won't be other AAC encoders in MEncoder. Only way to use NAAC would be to put out a raw PCM stream and then use some NAAC front-end for encoding. But that's not what I want to do...

However the raw AAC stream plays fine, only the muxed MP4 makes trouble. Check it out yourself: Don't close the window after encoding is completed and check the temporary .aac file. So I still think it could be a MP4Box problem...

celtic_druid

18th April 2006, 18:01

Not technically true if you count Coding Technologies reference encoder.

http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/26410.htm

hellfred

18th April 2006, 19:32

By the way, where to get recent faac source code? www.audiocoding.com only has a cvs snapshot from 2004-10-18, but download fails, on www.rarwares.org one can get binaris form 2005-05-17, but no source.

Hellfred

EDIT: OK, I managed to get the snapshot, but that one very old.
EDIT: Found faac project homepage on sourceforge.net link (http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac) But cvs seems to be down, so no latest code.
EDIT: As celtic_druid stated below, downloading the source via cvs works now agian. Browsing the source still fails.

celtic_druid

19th April 2006, 05:17

faac cvs is working here. Plenty of other sf cvs' not working here though.

ChronoCross

24th April 2006, 04:41

okay I'm having some issues with mencoder as of late. no matter what format or which version of mencoder I use or encode in the result is the same. any ideas?

http://chronocrossdev.com/images/snapshot20060423223841.bmp.jpg

That's what I see during playback.

Here is the file so you can see if it works for you.

http://www.chronocrossdev.com/videos/LOW.x264.avi

celtic_druid

24th April 2006, 05:16

When you say "no matter what format" you are talking about the input format or the output?

ChronoCross

24th April 2006, 05:41

I'll expand. Thanks CD.

1) Input format AVS using YV12, YUY(int), or RGB movie, episodes, short clips. Does not matter the length or resolution.

2) I've tried x264, xvid, ffvhuff. All of them come out exactly the same.

celtic_druid

24th April 2006, 08:12

Play the avs script in mplayer. I think you will find the same problem. In other words it is an AVISynth input problem, not an encoding problem. I have seen it myself, although I can't replicate t right now. When I have seen it though, it definatly didn't effect all avs input files. Maybe it is because I have updated AVISynth since then that I can't replicate it right now?

ChronoCross

24th April 2006, 14:54

I just updated to 2.5.7 Alpha 3. I was using another version before that same problem. The script works in vdub or if I feed it directly to x264. Just not mencoder. do you have any troubleshooting methods?

ChronoCross

24th April 2006, 19:51

I downgraded all the way back to avisynth 2.5.6a and now the problem with mencoder is fixed. The problem seems to occur with the 2.5.7 Alpha's.

manlord

12th May 2006, 19:39

Thanks lord mulder for this great program. I have tried several programs to find one that suits my needs, but all seem to have some flaws that is too big for me and my use.

Although your program scores the highest so far, it's still some things that i miss.

Could you add functionality for multiple file conversion? Not in the way many other programs do, they make you select one and one file and set the settings for each file, adding them to a list which is then converted one by one.

But it would really help me out if I could select a number of files and set all settings just once.

What I use this program for is converting tv recordings from mpg to mp4 so they take less space, but since i have up to 10 recordings each day this is a big job if i have to set settings for each file.

Hope you find time to add this feature, it would really make my day a whole lot easier.

LoRd_MuldeR

13th May 2006, 11:45

@manlord:

Well, everything is made to process a single file.
Multi-file support would need to modify almost any part of the program.

Not sure if that will ever by added, at least not until semester break...

manlord

13th May 2006, 16:40

What about also storing resize settings and x264 profile settings? This are the settings i have to adjust each time. As well as change from the default .avi output to .mp4.

What are you writing the program in? Is it possible to get the source code?

LoRd_MuldeR

13th May 2006, 17:18

@manlord:

Storing the x264 profile sounds good, but resize is specific to each single video. I think it's better to only store general stuff.

The program was made in Delphi. I use Delphi7 Professional.
If you need the sources, contact me...

thuongshoo

14th May 2006, 08:03

HI Lord_Mulder ! Can your program output mp4 or mkv ?
Does Frond-end run faster than cml ?
Thank you!

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 10:14

HI Lord_Mulder ! Can your program output mp4 or mkv ?
Does Frond-end run faster than cml ?
Thank you!

It's based on MEncoder, so output is always AVI.
However my front-end can extract the streams from AVI and mux to MP4 by using MP4Box. Just select "MP4" when you choose output file. But be warned: AAC audio doesn't work with MP4 currently, so please use MP3 for the audio. MKV is not supported yet. Maybe one day MEncoder will be able to output MP4 and/or MKV directly...

Why you think front-end could be faster?
The CLI application running in the background is 100% the same plus there's another app running: The GUI. So if there's any speed difference, then with the front-end it would be slower! But you won't notice any difference, since the GUI doesn't need much CPU time. It's like 99,99% is used by the CLI encoder and 0,01% is used by the GUI app.

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 15:07

*UPDATE*

v1.0.1.6

* Added Sharpen/Blur filter
* Made HQ denoise optional
* Selected x264 profile will be saved now
* Slightly improved GUI

celtic_druid

14th May 2006, 15:10

Maybe use Nero's cli aac encoder for mp4 output?

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 15:23

Maybe use Nero's cli aac encoder for mp4 output?

I think it would be possible, but it needs to produce AVI with uncompressed PCM audio, then extract the audio stream to Wave file and compress it with Nero's CLI encoder. Finally mux everything into MP4 with MP4Box. So there are a lot of steps needed and it will be a lot of work to automate everything in MEncoder264. I will do some testing on that when I have a lot of free time...

I still hope MEncoder will get proper MP4 or even MKV output one day, so we can avoid all this trouble with additional encoder/muxer apps :D

// EDIT

I also tried to let MEncoder output raw streams instead of AVI, but that was very ugly...

celtic_druid

14th May 2006, 15:45

mplayer to pipe pcm to neroAacEnc?
Then get audio size and use it to calculate video.
encode video to raw .264
mux .264 and aac via mp4box.

Guess that would really only work for a DVD source if you dump the video at the same time. Otherwise you would read the DVD twice.

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 15:54

The problem is, that MEncoder cannot output raw video and raw audio at the same time. So what I tried to solve that problem is this: Enable audio encoding during the first pass, so I can output raw audio during the first pass. Since the video stream form the first pass is not needed, that's okay. In the second pass I do the actual video encoding and use raw video output. So I could do everything with only 2 passes. Sounds good in theory, but it did not work! I got strange "diffrent number of frames" errors and stuff. I guess the stats file is not created properly if I use raw audio output. So I decided to fall back to AVI output and extract/remux the streams...

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 16:31

I just notice a problem with Sharpen & Deinterlace !!!
It seems that the sharpen filter breaks adaptive deinterlacing :(

As soons as I enable the "unsharp" filter, the "kerndeint" filter will always deinterlace the whole frame! Just like "threshold=0". How is that possible? I don't understand, because I first do the deinterlacing and *then* apply the sharpen filter. Any ideas?

here is the cmd-line:
"D:\MEncoder\MPlayer.exe" -sws 9 -vf kerndeint=10:1:0:0:0,unsharp=l3x3:0.5c3x3:0.5,scale -priority abovenormal -identify -ontop -geometry 50%:50% -monitoraspect 1.333333 "E:\VIDEO_TS\_Composite_20060315_201449.mpg"

//EDIT

Is it correct that -vf works that way?
-vf <first filter>,<second filter>,...,<n-th filter>

Or did I understand it wrong and it's the other way arround? *confused*

//EDIT 2

I moved the "unsharp" filter to the end of the filter-list and that fixed to problem.
I got no idea why, but it works fine now :)

Fixed build uploaded.

LoRd_MuldeR

14th May 2006, 21:16

*UPDATE*

* Fixed a bug introduced with the sharpen/blur filter (at least I hope so ^^)

thuongshoo

18th May 2006, 01:54

Lord!
Which option do you use to call Mencoder.exe ?
[req] output rawvideo
Thank!

popper

18th May 2006, 06:49

Future plans? hm... At the moment it does everything I need, so there are no big things planned. One thing I'll do, is adding some x264 profiles, because at the moment it will always encode with high (slow) settings. Other things might be added if people ask for them...

I've just added the auto-cropping you requested. In order to use it, keep the "Crop" filter disabled and press the Preview button. Once you return from preview, the cropping filter has been set to the correct values. You just need to enable it then :)

See download link above.

did you ever look at rebol/view to make your front ends
checkout this rebol browser plug-in to get and idea of what you can do with a few lines of script and the very small rebol/view app, its great for all kinds of gui's and the one script should work on many platforms
http://www.rebol.com/web-plugin.html
http://www.rebol.net/builds/
http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/expand-banner-text.r#banner-17

http://www.rebol.com/docs/easy-vid.html

i like the fact that if an app is shell/cli based and requires
and cross platform GUI for each compiled version then you only need the one script, and copy of rebol view for that
platform and then even your users can extend the basic script and help the standard gui grow as needs be, perhaps someone here can start one?.

LoRd_MuldeR

18th May 2006, 18:11

Lord!
Which option do you use to call Mencoder.exe ?
[req] output rawvideo
Thank!

I use AVI output, because MEncoder cannot output MP4 or MKV.
Furthermore raw video- or audio-output sucks, because you can only have raw audio *or* raw video...

A typical cmd-line would be:

"D:\MEncoder\MEncoder.exe" -sws 9 -vf kerndeint=10:0:0:0:0,crop=690:565,dsize=640:480,scale=640:480,unsharp=l3x3:0.25:c3x3:0.25 -ovc x264 -x264encopts frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:bime:b_adapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv:4x4mv:8x8dct:nopsnr:bitrate=1200:pass=2 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128:aq=0 -noskip -priority belownormal -passlogfile "C:\WINDOWS\Temp\~x264_93FB3A33.stats" -of avi -o "C:\LiveTV.x264.avi" "D:\Captured\LiveTV.mpg"

LoRd_MuldeR

18th May 2006, 19:33

did you ever look at rebol/view to make your front ends

Nope. I use Delphi7 Professional and I'm pretty happy with that :D
Currently I got no plans to leave Win32. Maybe .NET will be the direction one day, but not now...

Delphi Pro version was not cheap ^^

LoRd_MuldeR

21st May 2006, 02:32

*Update*

v1.0.1.7

1. Added support for custom command-line parameters
2. Added support for custom x264 profiles *
3. Minor bugfixes

* Edit "MEncoder264.ini" to specify custom profiles. Use with care !!!

LoRd_MuldeR

21st May 2006, 12:06

I'm thinking of something like this:
The contents of the text box in the "Command Line" tab also changes with respect to each pass.
http://files.darwin.uk.to/data/MEncoder264.png

By the way, did you modify some parameters in the default encoding options of MEncoder264? I've tried reencoding (using the newest version of MEncoder264) the same video I've encoded earlier. I've noticed that the quality dropped and is very noticeable. I'm just wondering if you changed some of the default parameters since the output of the exact same settings that I've always been using is different from before. Thanks.

I don't think it's a good idea to modify the command-line in the "progress" window. Because once you click the "Encode" button everything is supposed to run automatically. So IMO editing the command-line before each single pass isn't a good idea.

What do you think about the "custom parameters" and "custom x264 profiles" features I've added in latest release? Isn't that enough? Anything that cannot be done with that?

About the encoding parameters: I did not change anything. At least I hope so ^^ Only thing I added in v1.0.1.6 is the sharpen/blur filter. But you can disable it (value = 0,00), if you don't need it and then it won't appear in the command-line at all. Maybe you changed some settings in MEncoder264? For example the x264 profile? Or maybe you use some out-dated or broken MEncoder build? Otherwise I have no idea...

LigH

21st May 2006, 13:26

I can't use celtic-druid's Mencoder builds because I don't own any CPU that supports at least SSE (only a Duron Spitfire).

Are there alternative current builds anywhere?

LoRd_MuldeR

21st May 2006, 13:29

I can't use celtic-druid's Mencoder builds because I don't own any CPU that supports at least SSE (only a Duron Spitfire).

Are there alternative current builds anywhere?

Here there're some Win32 builds with x264 included, but they are pretty old:
http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php

Is the "K7" build suitable for you ???

BTW: Isn't it time to buy a new CPU? Even if you get a suitable build, encoding will be slow as hell...

Dark Eiri

25th May 2006, 01:13

LoRd_MuldeR

25th May 2006, 12:10

Hi guys. I must say: this is a awesome tool. I only use this one for my x264 encodes.

But everytime I choose MP4 as the output container, my audio gets off-sync. =/
I tried with a lot of videos, with different FPS, different audios (MP3 \ FAAC) and stuff, but the audio keeps going out of sync when I choose MP4 output. In AVI it's real fine, perfect sync, as the original file.

Can someone help me there?

Thank you in advance.

The problem with MP4 is that MEncoder cannot output MP4 files. Only AVI. So I use MP4Box in mye GUI to remux the streams from AVI to MP4. That seems to cause a lot of problems. I don't know if there's a way to do it better...

I recommend to use AVI output. If you don't like AVI files, just use AVI-Mux GUI (http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/) to remux the AVIs to MKVs. That works 100% fine here :D

JoeBG

25th May 2006, 12:16

mp4box only causes problems when the files have a delay.

You have to read out the delay with a dos-batchfile and include the delay in the commandline of mp4box.

LoRd_MuldeR

25th May 2006, 12:26

You have to read out the delay with a dos-batchfile and include the delay in the commandline of mp4box.

Maybe I'll do some testing on that when there's more time...

Dark Eiri

25th May 2006, 14:08

The problem with MP4 is that MEncoder cannot output MP4 files. Only AVI. So I use MP4Box in mye GUI to remux the streams from AVI to MP4. That seems to cause a lot of problems. I don't know if there's a way to do it better...

I recommend to use AVI output. If you don't like AVI files, just use AVI-Mux GUI (http://www.alexander-noe.com/video/amg/) to remux the AVIs to MKVs. That works 100% fine here :D

Thanks! I'll try MKV instead of MP4, since MKV accepts AAC audio I think it's perfect :D

Thanks ^^~

LoRd_MuldeR

25th May 2006, 14:20

Well, the AVI files with AAC-audio made with MEnocder play fine in MPlayer, but I don't get the audio working in MPC. I can convert such files to MKV with AVI-Mux GUI, but the audio still works in MPlayer only. So somehow MEnocder seems to makes AAC audio-streams that don't work in other Player except MPlayer...

Since MP3 audio works 100% fine - no matter if you use the AVI file or remux it to MKV - I guess you should use MP3 instead of AAC for the moment!

thuongshoo

28th May 2006, 07:25

LoRd_MuldeR

28th May 2006, 12:09

Your program is good but Mencoder is bad. Source file is wmv file, converted file isn't smooth. AVIcodec says that my file has about 3300 frames. VD MPEG-2 can't open this file. I edited a avs file and chose 24 framerate. And then, I open this avs file by VD MPEG-2. VD says that source file has about 6700 frames. Is AVIcodec right ? If AVIcode isn't wrong, I wasted disk for duplicate frames which AVIsynth inserted , rather
AVI can't contain VFR. So Mencoder can't also produce VFR. x264 isn't too

WMV uses variable framerate, but MEncoder always puts out constant framerate. So the framerate needs to be converted if you use nasty WMV for input. Best way is to avoid WMV and convert the source directly to x264. If you need to use WMV for some reason, then you must set the "output framerate" on the "Options" tab. Otherwise MEncoder makes a 1000fps file. So if you set the output framerate correctly, you should get satisfactory results. Also try to enable/disable the "Do not skip frames!" option...

Retief

2nd June 2006, 06:17

The problem with MP4 is that MEncoder cannot output MP4 files. Only AVI. So I use MP4Box in mye GUI to remux the streams from AVI to MP4. That seems to cause a lot of problems. I don't know if there's a way to do it better...

Just wanted to say thank you for creating this program.

It isn't a wizard, it exposes alot of options and just rocks. It gave me some ideas around creating MP4s of DVDs (NTSC). I had alot of the synch problems mentioned above until I forced the output FPS to the greatest possibly value of the content and changed the aac options to use Low Complexity.

So for NTSC DVDs I used: -ofps 29.976 -subfps 29.976 -faacopts object=1

I also passed the above fps to mp4box.

The framerate seemed to fix audio synch issues and the low complexity seemed to work better with mplayerc, ffdshow, + Nero. The resultant MP4s play fine in Nero, Media Center and mplayerc.

djclue917

6th June 2006, 03:36

I don't think it's a good idea to modify the command-line in the "progress" window. Because once you click the "Encode" button everything is supposed to run automatically. So IMO editing the command-line before each single pass isn't a good idea.

I was thinking of a read-only textbox which will show the current command being executed by MEncoder264. The contents of the textbox in the "Command Line" tab would vary with respect to the current command being executed. I think it would be useful for those people (like me) who wish to know what's really going on with the encode. Thanks!

LoRd_MuldeR

6th June 2006, 09:19

I was thinking of a read-only textbox which will show the current command being executed by MEncoder264. The contents of the textbox in the "Command Line" tab would vary with respect to the current command being executed. I think it would be useful for those people (like me) who wish to know what's really going on with the encode. Thanks!

Well, you can get the command-line that was used to launch an application with a tool like "Process Explorer" (from Sysinternals).

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/3964/procexp0eh.th.png (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=procexp0eh.png)

But I think I can just write the command-line to the log before each pass, so we don't need a new edit box...

djclue917

6th June 2006, 15:24

Well, you can get the command-line that was used to launch an application with a tool like "Process Explorer" (from Sysinternals).

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/3964/procexp0eh.th.png (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=procexp0eh.png)

But I think I can just write the command-line to the log before each pass, so we don't need a new edit box...

Hmmm... That seems much better. I hope you could add that feature in the next release. Thanks again!

Bencoder

7th June 2006, 20:18

DVD43, a freeware program that lets you decrypt straight from the DVD directly to another application, works nicely with this GUI. Most likely because MEncoder supports direct read from disk. If you want to encode straight from the DVD to a x264 file on HDD, definitely try this out! For some reason, my 2-pass attempt ended prematurely at the end of the first chapter on the 2nd pass. A 1-pass Qual encode worked very smoothly and the encode looked very nice. Anyhow, DVD43 and MEncoder x264 make good companions. Very close to a "one-click" solution..............

LoRd_MuldeR

8th June 2006, 13:35

*UPDATE*

v1.0.1.8

Added file history in "open" menu
Writing commandline to the log
Added audio delay option
Various bugfixes

djclue917

9th June 2006, 06:46

I think I found a bug... These are excerpts from MEncoder264's log for each pass:

> Pass 1 of 3 <

Commandline:
"D:\MEncoder264\MEncoder.exe" -sws 9 -vf pp=ac,hqdn3d,scale=512:384 -ovc x264

-x264encopts

frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:bime:b_a

dapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv

:4x4mv:8x8dct:nopsnr:bitrate=192:pass=1:turbo=1 -nosound -noskip -priority

belownormal -passlogfile "D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi.stats" -of avi -o

"D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi" "D:\MEncoder264\185.avi"

The 1st pass is OK.

> Pass 2 of 3 <

Commandline:
"D:\MEncoder264\MEncoder.exe" -sws 9 -vf pp=ac,hqdn3d,scale=512:384 -ovc x264

-x264encopts

frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:bime:b_a

dapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv

:4x4mv:8x8dct:nopsnr:bitrate=192:pass=3:turbo=1 -nosound -noskip -priority

belownormal -passlogfile "D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi.stats" -of avi -o

"D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi" "D:\MEncoder264\185.avi"

However, in the 2nd pass, the "pass" parameter is set to 3 instead of 2. By the way, is the "turbo" parameter appropriate for Nth passes?

> Pass 3 of 3 <

Commandline:
"D:\MEncoder264\MEncoder.exe" -sws 9 -vf pp=ac,hqdn3d,scale=512:384 -ovc x264

-x264encopts

frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:bime:b_a

dapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv

:4x4mv:8x8dct:nopsnr:bitrate=192:pass=2 -oac copy -noskip -priority belownormal

-passlogfile "D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi.stats" -of avi -o

"D:\MEncoder264\185.x264.avi" "D:\MEncoder264\185.avi"

Same problem here. This is already the 3rd pass. However, the "pass" parameter is set to 2 instead of 3.

By the way, I've re-encoded a video that I've already encoded in the past. During the 2nd pass, I've previewed the video and it was fine. However, in the 3rd pass, the quality severely plummeted that's why I decided to take a look at the log.

LoRd_MuldeR

9th June 2006, 13:12

I think I found a bug... These are excerpts from MEncoder264's log for each pass:

The 1st pass is OK.

However, in the 2nd pass, the "pass" parameter is set to 3 instead of 2. By the way, is the "turbo" parameter appropriate for Nth passes?

Same problem here. This is already the 3rd pass. However, the "pass" parameter is set to 2 instead of 3.

By the way, I've re-encoded a video that I've already encoded in the past. During the 2nd pass, I've previewed the video and it was fine. However, in the 3rd pass, the quality severely plummeted that's why I decided to take a look at the log.

pass=1 means "create new stats file" = First Pass
pass=2 means "read stats file, but do not update it" = Last Pass (for 2-pass and 3-pass)
pass=3 means "read and update stats file" = Nth Pass, except final pass

Please correct me, if I'm wrog ;-)

BTW: Turbo mode is used for all passes, except the final one.
This speeds up things a lot and doesn't effect the final video in a way you'll notice.
However "Turbo Mode" (aka "Fast first pass") is optional, look at the "Options" page ^^

And note that 3-pass usually isn't any better than 2-pass, so I'd use 2-pass.

djclue917

10th June 2006, 04:55

pass=1 means "create new stats file" = First Pass
pass=2 means "read stats file, but do not update it" = Last Pass (for 2-pass and 3-pass)
pass=3 means "read and update stats file" = Nth Pass, except final pass

Please correct me, if I'm wrog ;-)

BTW: Turbo mode is used for all passes, except the final one.
This speeds up things a lot and doesn't effect the final video in a way you'll notice.
However "Turbo Mode" (aka "Fast first pass") is optional, look at the "Options" page ^^

And note that 3-pass usually isn't any better than 2-pass, so I'd use 2-pass.

Oh... Is that so? Thanks for enlightening me. :)

Prysme

10th June 2006, 13:39

LoRd_MuldeR

10th June 2006, 14:24

Hi,

I am using mencoder fronted since a coupe of week from now, everything is fine, and I would like to thank you for your work first !

A nice enhancement could be perhaps to add a "add to queue" feature, I am using it to encode a lot of file, and in my case this feature is really usefully :)

Prysme.

Well, batch processing is not possible with the current structure of the program. It was made for processing a single file. So it would need a lot of changes. Maybe in the future, but don't expect too much.

Maybe I add some commandline-params, so you can run MEncoder264 form a batch file...

LoRd_MuldeR

16th June 2006, 01:05

*UPDATE*

v1.0.1.9

Added new installer with CPU type selection
Only one DL for all CPU types from now on
Several bugfixes
Stats files can be reused now
Added stop button for Preview
Updated MEncoder/MPlayer to SVN-2006-06-15

DarkZell666

15th September 2006, 12:23

Ehm, *knock knock knock*

It didn't work for me (on 2 different computers). (version 1.0.1.9)

I run the program, select an avi file to convert, configure the hole thing as I want it and click "Encode" : The encoding progress dialog opens and then doesn't progress at all.

Here's the log :
> Pass 1 of 1 <

Commandline:
"D:\Progz\mencoder264\MEncoder.exe" -sws 9 -vf scale -srate 44100 -af resample=44100:1:2 -ovc x264
-x264encopts frameref=6:bframes=3:me=3:subq=7:brdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:bime:b_adapt:cabac:b_pyramid:weight_b
:mixed_refs:chroma_me:trellis=1:i4x4:i8x8:8x8mv:b8x8mv:4x4mv:8x8dct:nopsnr:crf=18
-oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=96:aq=0 -noskip -priority belownormal -ofps 25 -of avi -o "D:\film (2).x264.avi" "D:\film.avi"

MEncoder dev-SVN-r18717-4.0.3 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz (Family: 15, Model: 2, Stepping: 9)
CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2
Setting process priority: belownormal
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x22ef28
AVI file format detected.
VIDEO: [XVID] 576x432 12bpp 25.000 fps 634.0 kbps (77.4 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:3 fourcc:0x44495658 size:576x432 fps:25.00 ftime:=0.0400
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
AC3: 2.0 (stereo) 48000 Hz 192.0 kbit/s
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 192.0 kbit/12.50% (ratio: 24000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
Opening video filter: [scale]
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
==========================================================================

And here is what I see :

http://xasonline.info/tmp/me264_NoActionWhatSoEverLoL.png

Any hints to what I could be doing wrong ? The cmdline seems correct though ...

Edit : the cmdline alone in a console does the same thing. Trying a new mencoder build right now.
Edit 2 : the newest build from celtic_druid does the same thing. Trying another video ... (already did this a couple of weeks ago but I'm still trying hard to get it to work :/)

I'm a bit frustrated because I like the UI very much and I would like to be able to use it ! ;)

Edit 3 : another completely different video did the same thing ...

Any thoughts on the matter are welcome !

LoRd_MuldeR

15th September 2006, 13:17

Do I understand correctly?
The same commandline works fine when you run it manually in console, but with the UI it doesn't work ???

If so, then really strange...

DarkZell666

15th September 2006, 13:19

LoRd_MuldeR

15th September 2006, 14:25

No, the commandline doesn't work in a separate console either ... it seems like it's an mencoder problem but how come ? the cmdline looks correct.
I'm not familiar with x264's mencoder options though ... and mencoder as always worked for me ... :(

I tried 2 different mencoder builds on 2 different video files (both avi with xvid and mp3 in them, nothing extraordinary ... oO)
I tried removing the priority switch, same punition.

Okay. I understand now.

So then it's not a problem of my UI, but a general problem with MEncoder.
However the commandline generated by my UI works fine here and there were no other reports of that problem so far.
Maybe there's a problem with your specific system or your specific source file(s).

Sorry, no idea what I could do about it...

DarkZell666

15th September 2006, 14:49

Well, I tried using a simpler cmdline such as :
mencoder -dvd-device e: dvd:// -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -o d:\test.avi
and it worked (with the two mencoder builds -yours and celticdruid's last one, launched from mencoder264's folder).

Then I tried using Mencoder264 again, choosing my DVD as a source file, configuring the hole lot as I wanted it, and clicking "Encode" ... stalled. I copied the cmdline generated by Mencoder264 in a console and launched it manually : same problem.

mencoder stalls after opening the codecs :
> Pass 1 of 1 <

Commandline:
"D:\Progz\mencoder264\MEncoder.exe" -sws 10 -vf kerndeint=10:0:0:0:0,pp=ac,crop=640:480,hqdn3d,dsize=640:480,scale=640:480 -srate 44100 -af resample=44100:1:2 -ovc x264
-x264encopts frameref=1:bframes=0:me=1:subq=1:nobrdo:deblock:deblockalpha=0:deblockbeta=0:nobime:nob_adapt:nocabac:nob_pyramid:noweight_b:nomixed_refs
:nochroma_me:trellis=0:noi4x4:noi8x8:no8x8mv:nob8x8mv:no4x4mv:no8x8dct:nopsnr:bitrate=700
-oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=96:aq=0 -noskip -priority belownormal -ofps 25 -frames 2000 -of avi -o "D:\DVD Track-1.x264.avi" -dvd-device "E:\VIDEO_TS" -alang fr,en dvd://1

MEncoder dev-SVN-r19668-4.0.3 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz (Family: 15, Model: 2, Stepping: 9)
CPUflags: Type: 15 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE SSE2
93 audio & 211 video codecs
Setting process priority: belownormal
There are 1 titles on this DVD.
There are 12 chapters in this DVD title.
There are 1 angles in this DVD title.
audio stream: 0 format: ac3 (stereo) language: unknown aid: 128.
number of audio channels on disk: 1.
number of subtitles on disk: 0
success: format: 0 data: 0x0 - 0x77956800
libdvdread: Could not open E:\VIDEO_TS with libdvdcss.
libdvdread: Can't open E:\VIDEO_TS for reading
libdvdread: Device E:\VIDEO_TS inaccessible, CSS authentication not available.
No matching DVD audio language found!
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x576 (aspect 2) 25.000 fps 6000.0 kbps (750.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:2 fourcc:0x10000002 size:720x576 fps:25.00 ftime:=0.0400
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
AC3: 2.0 (stereo) 48000 Hz 192.0 kbit/s
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 192.0 kbit/12.50% (ratio: 24000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
Opening video filter: [scale w=640 h=480]
Opening video filter: [dsize=640:480]
Opening video filter: [hqdn3d]
Opening video filter: [crop w=640 h=480]
Crop: 640 x 480, -1 ; -1
Opening video filter: [pp=ac]
Opening video filter: [kerndeint=10:0:0:0:0]
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 576 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
[PP] Using external postprocessing filter, max q = 6.
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
Using MMX optimized resampler
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try adding the scale filter, e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm: libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================

(don't pay attention to the libdvdread stuff, I have DVDRegion+CSS Free running).

The only conclusion (which yours agrees with) is that "my system" doesn't like the cmdline that Mencoder264 has generated. But what's so special with it ? :D

LoRd_MuldeR

15th September 2006, 17:06

The only conclusion (which yours agrees with) is that "my system" doesn't like the cmdline that Mencoder264 has generated. But what's so special with it ? :D

Does it only happen with DVD sources ???

hellfred

15th September 2006, 20:04

And the command is verz long. Is there not a limit on the length of the line you can start in cmd.exe?

DarkZell666

15th September 2006, 20:29

@LordMulder : yeah, to sum up I tried a DVD and 2 different avi files.

@hellfred : well, I thought about that, but then mencoder would surely crash saying "invalid option <blahblah>", <blahblah> being a truncated option or something. And LM says it works on his system so I can't be that. There, mencoder runs, opens the source file, opens the different codecs for decoding, and stalls.

I'll continue trying, 'coz I like the GUI's ease of use, but this sincerely bugs me a lot =)

Edit : I got it to work now ... I uninstalled Mencoder264, re-downloaded the full install package, reinstalled it, given it an avi file, and it's encoding ... wierd oO I'll try with the DVD I tried earlier right now.

Edit2 : works with the DVD too ! Great ! I still don't understand where the problem was though ... oO

Edit 3 :
I have a "tiny" request for you if you don't mind : could you add 32000hz to the audio samplerate combobox plz ? :p

Thx very much for your work on this, it's really cool. :D

LoRd_MuldeR

15th September 2006, 22:35

@DarkZell666

Nice to hear it works now, although I still got no idea where the problem was. But I don't now if I will make a new version of MEncoder264 in the near future, because I now use Avidemux a lot instead of MEncoder. Furthermore I am very busy ATM and there's not much time for programing...

LoRd_MuldeR

18th September 2006, 12:47

*Update*

Re-release of v1.0.1.9 with a few minor fixes plus up-to-date MPlayer/MEncoder builds inlcuded.

http://mencoder264.de.gg/

qwan

11th October 2006, 05:42

I encoded a small 2 minute dvd intro using MEncoder264 and i did not get any audio.
The picture had come out really nice @400 kbps.
So i guessed maybe it needs FAAC. So i put faac.exe in the MEncoder264 directory and proceeded to encode a .99gb file(20 minutes dvd ntsc).
I put it to encode last night(12hours ago) and it is still showing me 9 hours left it is somewhere half way throught the 2nc pass.
I have put it on a 3 pass encoding and faac @ 128kpbs 2 channel.
I have an atholon XP 64 2800+, nvidia chipset asrock motherboard with onboard nvidia 6100 (256mb shared), 1gb of ram(dual channel) and a sata 200 gb hardisk.
I have recently changed my motherboard. My old mother board was a km800 with s4 savage onboard vga 128mb shared memory.
ON my older machine staxrip would take around 3-3.5 hours to encode on a 3 pass 350kbps. I ripped a entire dvd of around 40 minutes to @ 490kbps 3pass and all the setting set high i.e. Exhaustive search, trellix always, 7 and insane quality in exactly 3hours 20 minutes.
After i changed my motherboard i tried ripping with staxrip it showed me the remaining time as 2 hours. I had to shut my system to change the UPS battery so I did not finish encoding.
I just hate the junk file staxrip creates and I still havent figured out how to get a muxed mp4 at one go from staxrip.
So I decided to use MEncoder264.
But now i am facing the above mentioned problems. I get no audio and it is taking just forever to encode.
Any suggestion or anything I am doing wrong.
Thank you

DarkZell666

11th October 2006, 11:52

Just to clear things up :

You observed that Mencoder264 didn't actually finish encoding a 20min dvd sample after 12 hours (on your new system), whereas StaxRip (via x264.exe I presume) finished a 40 minutes sample in 3'30 hours (on your old system).

20min = 36000 frames @ 30fps (NTSC).
12 hours = 43200 seconds, so encoding went at 36000/43200 = 0.83fps. Pretty slow indeed.

Do you still have MEncoder264's log, so we can see the cmdline ? Just in case it came out with wierd values.

Even so, you should double-check your hardware configuration & drivers (if you haven't already done that already :)) I can't see a newer config being so slow, unless you asked for HD resolution or 300fps content instead of 30 :p

DarkZell666

11th October 2006, 12:14

@Lord_mulder:

I figured out where a part of the problem was with my "mencoder stalls" problem : My system at work doesn't seem to like the -af resample=44100:1:2 option. resample=44100:1:1 doesn't work either, but resample=44100:1:0 works and the encoding starts without making a fuss. It's an mencoder problem obviously, but I thought I'd inform you and leave a trace of the problem, just in case someone else runs into this problem using your GUI.

Depending on wether the -srate option and the srate value of the resample filter are "appropriate" or not, mencoder will stall or not, on my system.

I'll report this in an appropriate thread of course ;)

LoRd_MuldeR

11th October 2006, 14:31

popper

18th December 2006, 06:30

I think it would be possible, but it needs to produce AVI with uncompressed PCM audio, then extract the audio stream to Wave file and compress it with Nero's CLI encoder. Finally mux everything into MP4 with MP4Box. So there are a lot of steps needed and it will be a lot of work to automate everything in MEncoder264. I will do some testing on that when I have a lot of free time...

I still hope MEncoder will get proper MP4 or even MKV output one day, so we can avoid all this trouble with additional encoder/muxer apps :D

// EDIT

I also tried to let MEncoder output raw streams instead of AVI, but that was very ugly...

im no expert but perhaps some of this asftopipe code might be of use?.
http://www.boutell.com/asftopipe/
"What is asftopipe?
asftopipe is a simple, open-source Windows utility that extracts audio and video streams from Windows Media ASF files, such as .WMV and .WMA files. Video streams are extracted as a continuous stream of PPM-format images. Audio streams are extracted as raw PCM samples. Both can then be written to named pipes, avoiding the need for gigantic files on disk. Key details such as the audio sample rate, video frame rate, audio sample size and number of audio channels are also available. "

"Consider the following example:

To convert wmv (from Windows Movie Maker, for example) to flv (Flash Video) with ffmpeg:

1. Start asftopipe at one cmd prompt (this is all one command line):

asftopipe mymovie.wmv -i -ap \\.\pipe\audiopipe_xxxxx -vp \\.\pipe\videopipe_xxxxx -ac 1

2. Note the fps: setting printed by asftopipe as a result of the -i (info) option. Practical conversion scripts and applications will read this output from an infofile created by using -if instead of -i, and set the -r option of ffmpeg to match.

3. Wait for Ready to appear (in a script or application, wait for the infofile to appear, and make sure it ends with the word Ready on a single line).

4. At a separate cmd prompt (again, all one line):

5. ffmpeg.exe -r 30 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i \\.\pipe\videopipe_xxxxx -f s16le -ar 22050 -ac 1 -i \\.\pipe\audiopipe_xxxxx -ab 56 -b 500 -f flv -vcodec flv test.flv

For complete documentation, just read the output of asftopipe -h | more at the cmd.exe prompt."

"// asftopipe.cpp: on the fly, convert an ASF (including .WMV or .WMA) file
// to PPM and PCM pipes, for ease of use with ffmpeg, lame and relatives.

// Copyright 2006, Thomas Boutell and Boutell.Com, Inc. Released under the
// terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later."

LigH

22nd December 2006, 07:31

You have a typo in your starting post:

MEnco>d<er264

popper

1st January 2007, 03:02

btw your link to the codecs is now broke, theres a copy here
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/windows-essential-20061022.zip

popper

5th January 2007, 13:03

LoRd_MuldeR

5th January 2007, 13:43

hmm so whats going on with your direct link?.
http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#mencoder264

its now saying ">> Attention: Please get yourself a proper Web-Browser !!! <<
Sorry, your browser is not capable of displaying this site properly :-( "

it was working fine the other day , please revert it back or its hard to advocate your app to other people if they cant even see the links due to your bad web authoring...

im using 'Advanced browser' on xp btw , am i wasteing my time posting as it seems your not interested in posting to this thread...

I've tested the website with W3 Validator and it is HTML 4.01 conform. Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera and Konqueror do display it correctly. Only IE messes up certain things. So why would anybody want to use a commercial software that obviously isn't working correctly (for years now), when there are plenty of free alternatives that work 100% fine?

No, I won't revert. It's really time you get a new browser ;)

popper

5th January 2007, 14:04

hi LoRd_MuldeR.
its nice to see you post here anyway.

fair enough, its your site afterall, i wont be changing browsers as this is the only one that lets me have masses of buttons at the bottom of the page (currently 58) and auto-loads them if i should close the app or have a crash, none of the other browsers mentioned do that
http://www.advancedbrowser.com/ and it is free if anyone wants to try it.

i did enjoy using your app so thanks for all your effort and time all the same.

hopefully anyone else that wants to try it in the future will not be using the standard IE on their machines or they wont be able to get it.

they probably wont be changing browsers just to get the chance to try an download an app they dont know yet even if it was one of my many posts advocating they try it.

thanks for reading and see ya...

mamber

23rd March 2007, 13:45

Hi, i wanna to encode audio using faac, but when I select it and finishing encoding - there is no audio within encoded movie :(
How to enable FAAC encoding with using Mencoder264?

LoRd_MuldeR

23rd March 2007, 17:51

Hi, i wanna to encode audio using faac, but when I select it and finishing encoding - there is no audio within encoded movie :(
How to enable FAAC encoding with using Mencoder264?

What output container did you use? If you used MP4, then please try AVI, because MP4 support in MEncoder264 is highly experimental. AAC in AVI also is problematic, so I suggest to stick with MP3 or use a different application. Also make sure that you use the MEncoder version that ships with my MEncoder264 installer. MEncoder264 might be incompatible with newer versions of MEncoder, since it was not updated for quite some time...

You can give Avidemux a try. That's the application I use now. Latest Win32 builds are here:
http://www.avidemux.org/admForum/viewtopic.php?id=768

il1019

14th April 2007, 09:21

So I've been using mecoder for a while, and mencoder264 had some nice features so i tried using that. I really like the quality i get from the insane profile on the first pass, but in the five attempts ive tried, all have failed on the second pass. They all stop about halfway through for some reason. They look excellent but they don't finish. Any tips?

My Settings: Ripping from a DVD-Video folder, Two-Pass Bitrate, 1500kbps. Used autocrop, streamed audio, fast first pass, do not skip frames, postprocessing and mplayers denoise filter turned unselected.

Is that bitrate too high? if you couldn't guess i really enjoy good quality, even if the first pass alone takes a day on my P4, and a few more for the second pass.
I once tried insane quality on a C7 1.5Ghz, first pass took a week. if the second pass would have completed, it would have taken 3 weeks. all in the name of quality.

LoRd_MuldeR

14th April 2007, 12:10

il1019

14th April 2007, 21:11

it just acts like its finished. It says its completed and finished and everything.

Is this the best way to get quality? ive been looking into the quality and quantizer options but since they are only single pass i don't have much faith in the quality. What would you recommend?

LoRd_MuldeR

15th April 2007, 10:11

it just acts like its finished. It says its completed and finished and everything.
That's strange.

Is this the best way to get quality? ive been looking into the quality and quantizer options but since they are only single pass i don't have much faith in the quality. What would you recommend?

1-Pass Quality/Quantizer gives you a constant level of quality, while 2-Pass will adjust the quality to the given target bitrate.
Also see "x264 options explained" in my signature for more info...

dansus

31st July 2007, 23:48

Hi, i just gave this a quick go and after clicking encode, it skips straight to 100% with no encoding.

I noticed the codec folder is empty, do i need to stick codecs in there?

LoRd_MuldeR

31st July 2007, 23:53

No, the "Codec" folder is for MPlayer's "Binary Codec Package", which is only needed to decode proprietary formats like WMV and stuff...

Do you use the MPlayer/MEncoder build that came with the installer or a newer one? If you used a newer one, try the one that came with the installer. (MEncoder264 seems to be incompatible with newer builds)

Also it could help if you give some more info: What is your input video? What are your settings? What is your OS? And most important: What does the log say?

Furthermore you can give Avidemux a try. Latest Win32 builds are here:
http://www.razorbyte.com.au/avidemux/

rernst

19th April 2009, 04:16

Is there a reason why the encoder only uses one of my four cores? On the command line I have to specify 'threads:0' for mencoder if I want to have it use all my cores. I don't see a way to do this in mencoder264. Am I overlooking something?

Ajax_Undone

19th April 2009, 12:50

LoRd_MuldeR

19th April 2009, 13:24

rernst

19th April 2009, 15:39

First of all try to replace your MEncoder.exe with a less archaic one:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=205275&package_id=248631&release_id=653658

You will also need to create a curstom x264 profile in "MEncoder264.ini", as the CLI arguments have changed in the meantime.
Hence all the "built-in" profiles don't work with a recent build of MEncoder :rolleyes:

Anyway, this project is discontinued! Alternative x264 front-ends include MeGUI (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96032), RipBot264 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611), HandBrake (http://handbrake.fr/) and MediaCoder (http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/).
Also Avidemux (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=126164) is an option you may want to give try...

None of this new stuff works for me, only mencoder command line. I am trying to recode material captured with the Hauppage HD PVR. This does not work with an AVIsynth script (forget MeGui in this case, yes, I tried everything, I am pretty good with Avisynth), Handbrake doesn't do it, Mediacoder doesn't,

The version of mencoder I am using *does* work. The problem is the A/V sync because the PVR captures at 60000/1001 fps. I need to compress down to 24000/1001. The only pieces of code that *do* work are Nero Recode (which does not always properly pick out the correct frames in a sequence, i.e. sometimes gives a bit jerky video) or mencoder command line with the options -vf fimdint -fps 60000/1001 and -ofps 24000/1001.

Personally, I am ok with command line but it is pretty sad that all the 'cool' new GUIs are a regression from the command line. (Btw, I use Handbrake for everything else but if the GUI doesn't).

Also, mencoder264's auto cropdetect didn't work but I am ok with command line there as well.

As all of this isn't a whole lot of coding as is. Never quite understood why all the GUIs like Staxrip and MeGUI went the AVS route. Relying on Directshow and the splitting of A/V streams never looked like a good idea (yes, I am aware that my script can thread them back together but then the sync is already lost or Avisynth takes an exception).

I think I'll take mencoder264's code and modify it. I think it is pretty neat otherwise.

rernst

19th April 2009, 15:42

Just realized - there doesn't seem to be any source or is there?

rernst

19th April 2009, 15:44

LoRd_MuldeR

19th April 2009, 15:52

Another comment on Avidemux: It purports to read my .TS files from the HD PVR but then only outputs garbage (as h.264). Do you think anybody would be interested in that feedback?

TS parsing is a work in progress (http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/avidemux/?rev=4737&sc=1), especially for H.264 content. I can only recommend to use Avisynth-input via DGAVCIndex (http://neuron2.net/dgavcdec/dgavcdec.html) for this material...

Never quite understood why all the GUIs like Staxrip and MeGUI went the AVS route. Relying on Directshow and the splitting of A/V streams never looked like a good idea (yes, I am aware that my script can thread them back together but then the sync is already lost or Avisynth takes an exception).

Because Avisynth is probably the most powerful and versatile tool for video editing and filtering in existence !?!?!?

Also using Avisynth does not mean to rely on DirectShow! It means that DirectShowSource is one option out of many options to read a source file.
There also is AVISource (Video for Windows), there's DGIndex for MPEG2/VOB files, there's DGAVCIndex for H.264 files and last but not least there is FFmpegSource now ;)
Why should developers spend time to re-invent the wheel, when Avisynth is available and working great ???

None of this new stuff works for me, only mencoder command line. I am trying to recode material captured with the Hauppage HD PVR. This does not work with an AVIsynth script (forget MeGui in this case, yes, I tried everything, I am pretty good with Avisynth), Handbrake doesn't do it, Mediacoder doesn't

You are aware that all these tools are based on x264, MEncoder and/or ffmpeg, just like MEncoder264?

If MEncoder does work from the commandline, it will work from one of the popular GUI's just as well. It's only a matter of choosing the right settings...

The version of mencoder I am using *does* work.

The version of MEncoder that ships with MEncoder264 uses x264 r555. It's simply insane to use that nowadays.
All the great features of x264, like VAQ and Psy RDO/Trellis, are missing in that outdated version...

Just realized - there doesn't seem to be any source or is there?

MEncoder264 sources are available on request. You will get a PM soon...

rernst

19th April 2009, 21:05

Thanks, got the source.

OF course I have been playing with DGAVC. It all boils down to the Hauppage files a this odd frame rate (actually, there are good reasons why they did it this way but I would not want to keep them in this format, recompressing from HD down to SD).

Let me demonstrate:

Directshowsource("a.ts")

Will play A/V fine from these files.

video=Directshowsource("a.ts", audio=false)
or
video=AVCSOurce("a.dga")
with audio=Directshowsource("a.ts", audio=false)

and

audiodub(audio,video)

Gives horrible A/V sync.

Really, what I would want to work (but it does not because the stream occasionally has small errors that cumulatively effect the a/v sync problems) is:

Directshowsource/AVCSource().Fdecimate()

which gives great video but just loses sync.

However, MeGUI insists on processing audio and video separately and Avisynth and DGTAVCIndex cannot handle those minor glitches (barely visible over the course of a couple of hours so I am not pointing fingers at Hauppage).

Only the latest Nero and mencoder (and probably ffmpeg but I haven't tried) can maintain a/v sync by being smart enough to actually look at the timestamps. Note that DIrectshowsource actually uses The Arcsoft audio decoder (and AC3Filter) and ffmpeg to decode as Graphedit shows. This works perfectly. Once you split the streams in Avisynth, the sync is lost.

Yes, there is some really cool processing in Avisynth but there are some fundamental issues with it as well. When I look at mencoder and observe the frames skipped with and without filmdint, -mc 0, fps and ofps - all result in different frame matching. There is some nifty logic in there that Avisynth cannot match due to the decoupling of the streams. Note that mencoder consistently spits out the A/V gap when encoding, a concept that eludes Avisynth.

Anyhow, I am not knocking it, I use it all the time. It's just that this is an exotic application (although there are a fair amount of people interested in this little box, where else can you record HD TV?) requires special care ;-).

I am otherwise using the latest encoder binary. I'll look at the code and see whether it can be adjusted without too much work.

LoRd_MuldeR

19th April 2009, 21:19

video=Directshowsource("a.ts", audio=false)
or
video=AVCSOurce("a.dga")
with audio=Directshowsource("a.ts", audio=false)

and

audiodub(audio,video)

Gives horrible A/V sync.

Use DGAVCIndex to demux the audio stream from the TS file (Audio -> Audio Demux -> Set All -> Done).

Then save the project, as usual. You can then load the audio file with the appropriate audio source filter. The filename will contain the correct delay in ms.

http://nic.dnsalias.com/nixaudiostuff.html

rernst

20th April 2009, 02:49

Use DGAVCIndex to demux the audio stream from the TS file (Audio -> Audio Demux -> Set All -> Done).

Then save the project, as usual. You can then load the audio file with the appropriate audio source filter. The filename will contain the correct delay in ms.

http://nic.dnsalias.com/nixaudiostuff.html

Of course, I can load the demuxed AC3 file instead. But the results are the same. It is not a fixed delay as hinted in the TS file (and shown by DGAVCIndex) but a constant drift.The two streams end up with different lengths. Sometimes it is more pronounced than others but it is possible to be off by a couple of seconds over a two hour movie.

Mencoder catches the glitches and patches audio and video together. Mencoder and Nero (neither of them using Directshow filters) were the only two tools I could find that managed to keep track of the A/V sync. Once I used an Avisysnth script and fed it into mencoder (or into Nero recode via avs2avi, it had issues with a straight avs file and required the proxy), sync is lost.

It would probably be interesting to investigate the exact why's and how's but it took me days of fiddling just to come up with the mencoder parameters (I *have* verified them with half a dozen of movies which now transcode properly).

Btw, the problem is likely slightly aggravated by the fact that the .TS file has been cut with h264tscutter but media player classic, media player, vlc and just about anything else I tried plays the file just fine. It is only when it is fed into Avisynth that the sync is lost (to be fair, it is also lost in Handbrake but it really isn't set up or meant to do the kind of frame decimation that I need).

I am really not familiar with the in's and out's of the internals of video formats and what could be causing this. Unfortunately I can also not pop out a sample clip as it takes a longer file (60+ minutes) and that is HD and 4GB+.

If you or someone wants to take it on I can send it via ftp or yousendit, though ;-)

LoRd_MuldeR

20th April 2009, 03:17

Of course, I can load the demuxed AC3 file instead. But the results are the same. It is not a fixed delay as hinted in the TS file (and shown by DGAVCIndex) but a constant drift.The two streams end up with different lengths. Sometimes it is more pronounced than others but it is possible to be off by a couple of seconds over a two hour movie.

If the duration of the video and audio track don't mach, you got two options:
* Use AssumeFPS() in Avisynth to set the framerate of the video track and make it fit the duration of the audio track
* Resample the audio track to make it fit the duration of the video track

Anyway, you may want to discuss your sync problem in the DGAVCDec thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122598) and provide a sample...

rernst

20th April 2009, 04:47

If the duration of the video and audio track don't mach, you got two options:
* Use AssumeFPS() in Avisynth to set the framerate of the video track and make it fit the duration of the audio track
* Resample the audio track to make it fit the duration of the video track

Anyway, you may want to discuss your sync problem in the DGAVCDec thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122598) and provide a sample...

I tried all of that. Assumefps for some reason just didn't do the trick. I don't know why. I tried resampling with Besweet but it isn't precise enough. Nero only does 15 minutes - god knows why. There was one other tool that I looked at that could have done the trick - but at that point the process to make it work for what I wanted to do was much more involved than using a recent version of mencoder.

I spent a long time analyzing this problem. I will post a write-up on this on my site as I am sure this will be a process others go through.

I pulled up the code for mencoder264 under Delphi 2009 and I get a few problems with TJVspinedit not being found. There are a couple of other minor errors opening it. What version of Delphi did you use?

I seem to be missing some other code such as MuldeR_Toolz and MuldeR_Process.

If it is too much of a hassle, I'll scramble up something from scratch (it has been a looong time I coded Delphi) but it looked like you (?) had almost all pieces in place...

LoRd_MuldeR

20th April 2009, 09:21

I pulled up the code for mencoder264 under Delphi 2009 and I get a few problems with TJVspinedit not being found. There are a couple of other minor errors opening it. What version of Delphi did you use?

Delphi 7.0 ;)

Also I make use of the JVCL (http://jvcl.delphi-jedi.org/) library...

I seem to be missing some other code such as MuldeR_Toolz and MuldeR_Process.

I sent you the missing files.

roozhou

20th April 2009, 10:49

Of course avisynth cannot do anything perfectly, and sometimes quite bad.
You had better give up avisynth when you encounter A/V sync problems, since avisynth does not know what PTS is.

Try my dshow x264 build. You don't need to demux anything. No A/V desync. Encoding will be done in one pass.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141441