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10 Oct 2024 19:21:31 EDT (-0400)
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From: Mueen Nawaz
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 15 Jun 2008 19:22:18
Message: <4855a42a@news.povray.org>
Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> [Although actually... Mencoder is doing something strange at me. No 
> matter how high I turn up the bitrate, the colours look a tad blocky for 
> no apparent reason...]

MPEG1 sucks.

-- 
In an Astronomy class (toward an Astronomy major, not that gen-ed crap) 
the professor did not tell us we would have to remember constants, and 
he asked them as questions. They were short questions, and weren't worth 
a lot.

One of them was: What is the orbital period of Saturn? (2 pts/100)

I started thinking about Bode's law and the posibility I could calculate 
it from an approximate radius I would get from that law... if I could 
remember it. But when you expect a 72% to be an A on a test, you have 
bigger fish to fry.

Then I got it. It was right, it should work, and no one would have to be 
nailed to anything.

I wrote: One Saturn-Year

I didn't get credit for it. A couple years later a sophomore was telling 
me about this funny question he had in the same class. He showed it to 
me. It read:

What is the orbital period of Saturn? (Do not put one Saturn-Year)

I was so right that it had to be guarded against. Yet those were 2 
points I would never have.

(as told by SetupWeasel on Slashdot)


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 15 Jun 2008 23:39:22
Message: <4855e06a$1@news.povray.org>
Mueen Nawaz wrote:
> 
>     Many DVD players can't handle it. However, if that's not his target, 
> I'll agree that mpeg1 is a bad idea. But then again, I get occasional 
> requests from friends to encode stuff from one format to another because 
> they want to send it to relatives, and they want to make sure it'll 
> work. The assumptions are that they won't have special software like 
> Quicktime Player or VLC, nor will they have any codecs that don't come 
> with Windows. The only real option is MPEG1 or 2.
> 

On that target (have-to-play for relatives etc) I'd shoot for MPEG-2 and 
a "real" playable DVD-Video -disc (as I guess Andrew will finally be 
doing). It would seem the easiest and nicest way to watch such a video.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 15 Jun 2008 23:39:22
Message: <4855e06a$3@news.povray.org>
On Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:52:54 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> It always surprises me when a big well-known "jewl" of the open source
> scene has really poor documentation. You'd think something that popular
> would be well-documented...

This isn't unique to the open-source world.  I've seen plenty of 
commercially-available offerings over the years that the documentation 
was nonexistent.

Jim


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 04:02:55
Message: <48561e2f$1@news.povray.org>
Eero Ahonen wrote:

> On that target (have-to-play for relatives etc) I'd shoot for MPEG-2 and 
> a "real" playable DVD-Video -disc (as I guess Andrew will finally be 
> doing). It would seem the easiest and nicest way to watch such a video.

This is my ultimate target, yes.

Weirdly, my PC will play DVDs, but if I tell Mencoder to produce an 
MPEG-2 file instead of MPEG-1, the result isn't playable.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 04:08:22
Message: <48561f76$1@news.povray.org>
>> I'm curios... why is it so damned hard to do this??
> 
>     Why do you think it's hard.

Why can't I just say -ovc mpeg1? Why do I have to say -ovc lacv 
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video? That seems unecessarily complex.

Also, why is there *nowhere* in the manual that says "to produce a 
standard MPEG-1 file, type XYZ"? Do you have any idea how freakin long 
it took me to decode the manual to the point where I could construct 
this commandline?

[E.g., nowhere is it actually documented that if you want to pass 
*multiple* options to lavc, you have to seperate them with colons. 
Eventually I noticed it in an example - an example demonstrating 
something completely unrelated to syntax - and copied it. In general, 
trying to figure out how the hell to make Mencoder do anything reduces 
to endless trail and cryptic error...]

> Most of these things will be needed whatever software you use. I've 
> noticed converting to MPEG1 or 2 is always a pain - I just use the avi 
> format and a codec like xvid. The commandline is a bit short.

As far as I can tell, making Mencoder output any format is equally 
difficult and error-prone. [I still can't get it to produce an 
uncompressed AVI file that anything except MPlayer can comprehend.] 
Adding a rare codec like XviD would just make matters worse...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 06:45:50
Message: <4856445e@news.povray.org>
>> [Although actually... Mencoder is doing something strange at me. No 
>> matter how high I turn up the bitrate, the colours look a tad blocky 
>> for no apparent reason...]
> 
> MPEG1 sucks.

Define "sucks".

MPEG1 works just fine, and I've used it plenty of times before. However, 
Mencoder is doing something weird with it. One could argue that Mencoder 
sucks, not MPEG1. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 09:56:51
Message: <48567123$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
>>
>> MPEG1 sucks.
> 
> Define "sucks".

The picture quality of MPEG1 is something horrible.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 10:05:37
Message: <48567331@news.povray.org>
>>> MPEG1 sucks.
>>
>> Define "sucks".
> 
> The picture quality of MPEG1 is something horrible.

Doesn't that rather depend on what bitrate you select? [Same as any 
other lossy codec...]

Now, if you wanted to say that the picture quality to bitrate ratio is 
inferior, that's another matter.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Eero Ahonen
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 10:39:03
Message: <48567b07@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
>>>> MPEG1 sucks.
>>>
>>> Define "sucks".
>>
>> The picture quality of MPEG1 is something horrible.
> 
> Doesn't that rather depend on what bitrate you select? [Same as any 
> other lossy codec...]

No, AFAIK with MPEG-1 the bitrate only defines *how* horrible the 
picture quality is.

Go ahead, prove me wrong and throw a link to MPEG-1 -file, which 
actually has good picture quality?

> Now, if you wanted to say that the picture quality to bitrate ratio is 
> inferior, that's another matter.

Yes, that's another matter, but that's also true.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Mencoder question
Date: 16 Jun 2008 11:15:21
Message: <48568389@news.povray.org>
Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> It always bugs me when people build open-source tools they expect others 
> to use (like libraries and such) and then expect you to read the source 
> code to try to figure out what it does because they're too lazy to write 
> even the vaguest of documentation.

  Fortunately mplayer isn't such a software.

  Can you give me an example of a library which is almost completely
undocumented? (Sure, in many cases the documentation sucks big time,
but usually you *can* start using the library by reading the documentation,
even if it could have been made easier.)

  In fact, many open source libraries have pretty decent documentations.
One example: http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/stable/

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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