Indeo 5 conversion

[pptman]

I would like to convert Indeo 5 encoded video files to something more useful on my Mac. I have separately installed a pre-compiled "MPlayer OSX" application (and associated binary codecs in /usr/local/lib/codecs) and this works fine to view the files. So was hoping that ffmpegX+mencoder would be able to do the conversion job. Installing ffmpegX installs its own versions of mencoder and mplayer and I am unable to get these to do anything (neither view nor convert) with my Indeo 5 files.

I notice that a "strings mencoder" and "strings mplayer" both flag up the required codec "ir50_32.dll" but neither seem to be able to use this from its standard location at /usr/local/lib/codecs/ir50_32.dll. Do I need to put these binary codecs somewhere else for the ffmpegX versions of mplayer and mencoder to find them? Or is there something else I need to do to make ffmpegX do the conversion?

[jpschuck]

ffmpegX is not able to use any other version of mlpayer/mencoder than its own. Only recent versions of mplayer can take advantage of the Indeo 5 external codec.

You can use a recent mplayer binary (such as the one provided with Mplayer OS X) via the terminal (that means command line) to output a raw uncompressed YUV4MPEG file that you can convert in ffmpegX.

[Ai Haibara]

Doesn't Perian support Indeo Video, now? Could ffmpegx be able to handle Indeo 5 with Perian installed and the decode with Quicktime option enabled?

[jpschuck]

According to the wikipedia there is actually NO open source project supporting Indeo 5 ; and Perian is basically just an libavcodec/libavformat/ffmpeg wrapper for Quicktime. I'm not even sure that support for Indeo 3 & 4 has already been enabled within Perian.

[Ai Haibara]

(looks at changelog) Ah, okay. I can't use Perian, myself, because I have an older system, so I can't test it - but I'd seen some mention a month or two ago that proclaimed Perian supported Indeo Video, though not which versions. The December 08 changelog lists Indeo 2 and 3, I believe.