Help:Mencoder

See also: Help:Converting video and Commons:Video

This page gives limited help on using Mencoder to convert videos, mainly to and from the Theora OGG media format. This help will focus on Mencoder's command line use.

Mencoder resources

• MPlayer on Windows (win32) - downloadable builds, such as rtm-svn-31170
• Chapter 10. Basic usage of MEncoder
• Chapter 11. Encoding with MEncoder

Convert Ogg-Theora to another format

These examples use MPlayer-rtm-svn-31027 (MEncoder Sherpya-SVN-r31027-4.2.5 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team), and OGG video files from Wikimedia Commons.

x264 and mp3lame in an AVI container

• download File:Hyraxchewing.ogv from Commons
• mencoder.exe Hyraxchewing.ogv -of avi -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -o Hyraxchewing.ogv_mencoderx264mp3.avi
• note that audio sync is broken in the resulting AVI; compare with the transcoding produced by http://www.online-convert.com/ (which also changes the frame rate)

mpeg4 and mp3lame in an MKV container

• download File:Hyraxchewing.ogv from Commons
• mencoder.exe Hyraxchewing.ogv -of lavf -mc 0 -noskip -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac mp3lame -o Hyraxchewing.ogv_mencodermpeg4mp3mcnoskip.mkv
• note the quality is considerably degraded, although the audio is in sync

Use vbitrate to improve quality

• mencoder.exe Hyraxchewing.ogv -of lavf -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=3300 -oac mp3lame -o Hyraxchewing.ogv_mencodermpeg4mp3vbitrate3300.mkv
• Note this produces a video with quality close to the original OGG