Video Encoding

I made it! I finally able to play my digital-camera recorded avi files in my avi-compatible dvd player.

So, to play the digital-camera AVIs files in DivX certified dvd players, use the following command. You can see that I'm trying to convert the 15.00 fps NTSC type avi file at 320x240 frame size to be able to play in my dvd player. Finally made it works on the 8th trial. The trick is the right format of video codec to use. You can tweak the audio encoding parameter to closely match your digital-camera's (mine is 11024 Hz to 12000 Hz).

avif=test8.avi

$ nice ffmpeg -i test1.avi -acodec mp3 -ab 32k -ar 12000 -ac 1 -vcodec mpeg4 -pix_fmt yuv420p -sameq -r 24 -y $avif
Input #0, avi, from 'test1.avi':
  Duration: 00:00:21.3, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2656 kb/s
  Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj422p, 320x240, 15.00 fps(r)
  Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_u8, 11024 Hz, mono, 88 kb/s
Output #0, avi, to 'test8.avi':
  Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 320x240, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 24.00 fps(c)
  Stream #0.1: Audio: libmp3lame, 12000 Hz, mono, 32 kb/s
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
  Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
frame=  510 fps=226 q=4.0 Lsize=    2598kB time=21.2 bitrate=1001.5kbits/s
video:1147kB audio:84kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 111.119497%

-r--r--r-- 1  7083894 12-31 14:49 test1.avi
-r--r--r-- 1  2660150 01-03 12:51 test8.avi

The converted file is not only playable in my dvd player, but also less than 40% of the original size. Bravo!!!

FYI, my ffmpeg:

FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  libavutil version: 49.4.1
  libavcodec version: 51.40.4
  libavformat version: 51.12.1
  built on Jul 19 2007 10:55:35, gcc: 4.1.3 20070629 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-13)

documented on: 2008-01-03