Encoding Xvid under Linux?

[Bear]

Hello all,

I heard that if I use mencoder to encode mpeg2 to xvid under linux, the encoding speed will be much faster compare with Windows. Is that true?

I am going to build a encoding machine real soon. If I go with windows, I might need a real powerful machine or even dual cpus to do the job. Since I got tons of mpeg2 files that need to transcode to xvid. If I go with Linux, I might need a lower spec machine. Cost lower but faster speed, may be :-).

I have some questions about encoding under linux, can any expert here give m some info? Thanks in advanced.

If I use mencoder, will the encoding speed much faster than windows?
Is the quality just the same?
How fast is the dvd ripping speed?
If I use mencoder, am I need to encode the audio and video separately?
Which linux distribution should I use? RH 9.0 is a good choice?
Is there any good online tutorial about mencoder and xvid?

[evade]

Re:Speed

Encoding speed varies greatly with your settings and the build of the encoder.

I encode with transcode under linux, haven't played too much with mencoder. My machine is an AMD XP 2800+ (2088 mhz Barton) with 1GB PC3200 Ram on an ASUS A7N8X DELUXE running Debian Linux testing/unstable
These are a couple of speeds I get encoding NTSC matirial at 704x352 and a bitrate of 1714

45-50 fps With the latest dev-api-3 build (No longer being developed) and The default High quality settings (-Q 5)

20-23 fps with a build of the 11/11/03 CVS dev-api4 and the following settings (VHQ 1, CHROMA ME etc) :
http://www.danverspaintball.com/files/xvid4.cfg

I can't compare this to windows because I don't know anyone using this build on windows.





Re: Linux Distribution

Any distribution will work. If you are going to do what I do you will end up building a lot of your applications from the very latest release or CVS sources. I love the APT packaging system that comes with debian, With the unofficial sources listed I can meet most dependancies very easily.

I prefer usind transcode on the commandline so I can batch encode. Here is a simple script I wrote to encode a 16:9 movie to XVID. It assuemes you set environment variables $PROJECTNAME and $BITRATE have ripped the main title vobs to /work/transcode/$PROJECTNAME/vob/ (I use dvdbackup for this).
This script can be called multiple times, changing the environment variable from a foreach loop or another script.

http://www.danverspaintball.com/files/Transcode169.sh



Useful links:

Transcode Home Page:
http://www.theorie.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~ostreich/transcode/

Guide to ripping and encodeing under linux:
http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/en/single/index.html

Monitor These lists for changes to the CVS sources of XVID
http://edu.bnhof.de/pipermail/xvid-devel/


Unoffical Debian APT sources I use (with apt-pinning testing/unstable)

# Video Packages like transcode, mplayer, xvid
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ testing main

# Video Packages like transcode, mplayer, xvid
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main

##RAREWARES AAC/MP4 (faad2, faac, aac/mp4 playback plugins)
deb http://pessoal.onda.com.br/rjamorim/debian/ ./

##RAREWARES MAIN (lame, lame-ha, lamip, cue2toc, shntool)
deb http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/xmixahlx/debian/ ./
deb http://xmixahlx.dyndns.org/debian/ ./

# mkvtoolnix
deb http://www.bunkus.org/debian/unstable/ ./

[Bear]

Hi evade,

Welcome your 1st post. And your 1st post is so informative. I will try to encode some videos under RH first, cos I got a web server running on RH. Just to see how it works in Linux. I might use mencoder cos I heard the encoding speed is much faster than transcode.

[jggimi]

Welcome to Doom9's forum, evade. :helpful: :goodpost: :thanks: What a great introductory post!

[evade]

If anyone has any comments or advice on the xvid configuration or the transcode script please don't hold back.

Or maybe someone has a similar script for mencoder with xvid dev-api4, I would love to see that.