On Sun, 21 Apr 2002 11:16:48 -0400 Michael Kaminsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My digital camera can create short movies which are in AVI file format > and use the Motion JPEG codec. I have several programs that can play > them; that's no problem. > > I have two questions: > > 1. What's the best file format and codec such that people using > Windows, Mac, and Unix can view the video relatively painlessly? > (A smaller size/better compression would also be great.) If you want to be hip, DivX ;-). There are players and transcoders for all three platforms. DivX generally has better qualilty at smaller file sizes because it has this so-called 2-pass encoding. There are even free (as in speech) clones of DivX, if you care about such things. > 2. Is there a Linux command-line utility that can convert from my > current AVI/Motion JPEG format to this other format (command-line > is preferable but not technically a requirement)? > > Again, I don't need a viewer, just a converter of some sort. Command-line actually rules. The most compliant transcoders are probably from the mjpegtools project ( http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/). They can output to mpeg's (1/2) that are compatible for burning into VCD's and DVDs (don't take my word on that one; I hate DVDs) and DivX. What you might initially find offputting is that mjpegtools is a suite of tools as unix'y as they come. Take a look at this sample command chain (nothing an RTFM can't cure): lav2yuv +n glav_edit_list | yuvdenoise -b 8,4,-8,-4 | mpeg2enc -o video.m1v lav2wav +n glav_edit_list | mp2enc -o audio.mp2 mplex -f 1 audio.mp2 video.m1v -o movie.mpg If you want something less fiddly, I would recommend either transcode or MEncoder (from the mplayerhq.hu folks). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
