This is the command:įfmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 -vtag xvid -qscale:v 4 -c:a libmp3lame -qscale:a 5 output.avi As efficiency nerd, I’ll use variable bitrate encoding for both audio and video. First attempt: a basic audio/video conversion mkv), support subtitles and chapter markers (among other functionalities).ĪVI limitations will cause me a problem, as seen in the last section, but for this player, it’s the only choice. This must be kept in mind for example, “MP4 audio files” are a common source of confusion: technically, to be exact, MP4 is the container, while the audio stream encoding format is AAC.Ĭontainers have other characteristics. Note how I’ve separated the concept of “container” (AVI) and “streams” (video and audio). It has been for a long time used for distributions of movies whose video was encoded in the famous DivX format, which marked the beginning of the online movies piracy.Īs a matter of fact, to be specific, the player supports DivX video and MP3 audio streams stored in an AVI container. A brief introduction to video file related concepts and formatsĪfter reading the related section of the player manual, I gathered that the supported video format is AVI.ĪVI is a very old container format, and limited, by today’s standards. Modern Ubuntu versions ship with FFmpeg, although in the past, they shipped for a while with Libav.Ī good starting point for understanding the fork history is an LWN article, which strives to stay neutral. First attempt: a basic audio/video conversionįFmpeg is a “free and open-source project consisting of a vast software suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other media files and streams”.įrom a practical perspective, the user uses a single executable, ffmpeg, which, through a huge (but logical and consistent) amount of switches, can perform operations on media files.įFmpeg is (or better, has been) associated with Libav, a fork that has seen some success in the past, but it seems dead(-ish) in the present.įor the sake of this article, both are equivalent (except that the Libav binary is named avconv).A brief introduction to video file related concepts and formats.
I will also explain general concepts of media handling, like containers and encoding formats. This post will give a glimpse of the tools that FFmpeg provides, showing how easy it is to perform the video/audio conversion, with extra processing. Therefore, this was a good occasion to exercise the FFmpeg conversion and processing capabilities.
The player was very old, and couldn’t handle the video file (a modern MP4). During my last vacation, I wanted to watch some very old cartoons, during the daily break, on the digital media player that the apartment provided.
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