MPEG2 Encoder for Linux?

[Muppet Meat]

Are there any MPEG2 encoders that equal the quality of Cinemacraft Encoder but is supported on the linux platform?

[wmcbrine]

I haven't used CCE, but mpeg2enc from the mjpegtools package seems pretty good. I would not recommend mencoder for MPEG2 -- the result looks good, but it doesn't play back properly in WinDVD/PowerDVD/etc.

[courtrrb]

Every file I've converted with mencoder has work with WinDVD/PowerDVD/etc the catch is you have to get the options just right. As a matter of fact it convert video clips that TMPGEnc just thows up on. The easiest way to use mencode is to get tovid. It looks at each clip and sets the options correctly.

[disturbed1]

Tovid is the way to go for easy VCD, SVCD, DVD mpeg encoding. The files work just fine on every standalone DVD player I've tried. Sorry, don't have a windows install anymore to test play back with WinDVD or PowerDVD, but the files do work just fine with Xine, Mplayer and Totem

No, the quality isn't anything like what you'd get from TMPG, CCE(w/Avisynth) or Procoder. But for simple video to DVD for your personal use, it's more than enough.

If you require more, you can always use Avidemux, which has a few filters ported from avisynth, and has the option of using mpeg2enc or ffmpeg.

[wmcbrine]

Yes, the mencoder MPEG2 files I made also play back perfectly with mplayer, xine and totem, so that's not really a test. What I found when I played them on WinDVD etc. was the colors going wacky every few frames. I'll check out tovid, thanks.

[courtrrb]

Just to double check thing out I went back to a couple of DVD's I made and played them back with WinDVD and your right they do play like crap. But the funny thing is they play perfect in my stand-alone dvd player on top of the tv and againg with Xine & Mplayer. So is it poor video encoding or a poor video playback?

[disturbed1]

It could be the multiplexing.

Most directshow codecs have trouble with certain streams. I know, when I ran windows, Power DVD had an issue playing back multiplexed VOBs, but of course played the title perfectly when I loaded the IFO.

[Garibaldi]

Tovid is the way to go for easy VCD, SVCD, DVD mpeg encoding. The files work just fine on every standalone DVD player I've tried. Sorry, don't have a windows install anymore to test play back with WinDVD or PowerDVD, but the files do work just fine with Xine, Mplayer and Totem

No, the quality isn't anything like what you'd get from TMPG, CCE(w/Avisynth) or Procoder. But for simple video to DVD for your personal use, it's more than enough.

If you require more, you can always use Avidemux, which has a few filters ported from avisynth, and has the option of using mpeg2enc or ffmpeg.

Yeah tovid is really the app for the job, its easy (the command line isn't very hard) and produces very good results.

[wmcbrine]

So is it poor video encoding or a poor video playback?

Frankly, it doesn't matter. I can't just cut those programs out of consideration if I want to distribute something, so I have to have good playback in them. Anyway, I get good playback with mpeg2enc streams; and the only streams I see this effect with are from mencoder, so that seems like an encoding problem to me.

[schunn99]

hey all,
Is there a mpeg2 encoder app for linux that rivals tmpgenc? or is someone making a port of tmpgenc for linux?
thanks,
schunn99

[courtrrb]

I've had more problems using tmpgenc so I hope its never ported to Linux. If the video codec isn't exactly on standard it thows up. If you want a mpeg2 use tovid. It uses mencoder a part of Mplayer and it's easier to install then tmpgenc and all the different codecs it needs. It will convert 100+ times more than tmpgenc ever will.

[disturbed1]

I've had more problems using tmpgenc so I hope its never ported to Linux. If the video codec isn't exactly on standard it thows up. If you want a mpeg2 use tovid. It uses mencoder a part of Mplayer and it's easier to install then tmpgenc and all the different codecs it needs. It will convert 100+ times more than tmpgenc ever will.

Tovid doesn't use mencoder for anything. It does use mplayer to stat the video and to pipe a yuv stream to mpeg2enc (part of mjpegtools), ffmpeg for ac3 encoding, and mplex (mjpegtools also) for muxing.

[courtrrb]

Ah disturbed1 think again. Here is a few lines of code taken from tovid. So please get your facts straight before posting a comment like that.

# ***********************************
# ENCODE VIDEO
# ***********************************

echo "$SEPARATOR"

# If existing video is OK, skip video-encoding step
if [[ -z $FORCE_ENCODING && -n $VIDEO_OK ]]; then
echo "The video stream already appears to be in the selected output format."
echo "Video will be copied as-is."
# Copy the video stream
mencoder -nosound -ovc copy "$INFILE" -o "$OUT_PREFIX.$VID_SUF" >> $LOG_FILE 2>&1
else
[[ -e stream.yuv ]] && rm stream.yuv
echo "Creating and encoding video stream using the following commands:"

# If we're doing two-pass encoding, the commands are somewhat different...
if [[ $TWO_PASS == "y" ]]; then
VID_PLAY_CMD="mencoder \"$INFILE\" -o stream.yuv -nosound -ovc lavc \
-lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg:mbd=2 $VID_FILTER $VID_SCALE -ofps 29.97"
VID_ENC_CMD="lav2yuv $LAV2YUV_ASPECT stream.yuv | \
$YUVDENOISE mpeg2enc $MTHREAD \
$ASPECT_FMT $MPEG2_FMT $VID_FPS $VERBOSE $VID_NORM $MPEG2_QUALITY \
-o \"$OUT_PREFIX.$VID_SUF\""
echo $VID_PLAY_CMD

[disturbed1]

I tried several approaches, including ffmpeg and transcode, before settling on the use of mplayer and mjpegtools. While mplayer's mencoder was not particularly well-suited to actually encoding video to MPEG format, mplayer is the most robust video player I know of for the Linux platform. It can play nearly any video you can throw at it, regardless of format. The utilities included with mjpegtools were perfect for getting MPEG format within the right parameters.

julie@debian:~$ tovid-interactive /home/julie/keith_mp3/000Julie/Pan/Nip.Tuck.2/nip.tuck.2x06.avi
--------------------------------
tovid-interactive
Version 0.18b
Written in 2004 by Eric Pierce
http://tovid.sourceforge.net/
--------------------------------

Welcome to the tovid-interactive script. This script is an interactive
front-end for the tovid video conversion script. I will ask you several
questions about the video you want to encode, and then run the tovid
script with the options you choose.
================================================== =======
Encoding the filename provided on the command-line:
/home/julie/keith_mp3/000Julie/Pan/Nip.Tuck.2/nip.tuck.2x06.avi
================================================== =======
You can encode this video to one of the following formats:
For burning onto DVD:
dvd DVD format 720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL
half-dvd Half-DVD format 352x480 NTSC, 352x576 PAL
dvd-vcd VCD-on-DVD format 352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL
For burning onto CD:
vcd Video CD format 352x240 NTSC, 352x288 PAL
svcd Super Video CD format 480x480 NTSC, 480x576 PAL
Please enter one of the formats above (vcd, half-dvd, dvd-vcd, vcd, svcd).
format: dvd
================================================== =======
Do you want the video to be NTSC or PAL? If you live in the Americas
or Japan, you probably want NTSC; if you live in Europe, you probably
want PAL. Please use lowercase (ntsc, pal).
ntsc or pal: ntsc
================================================== =======
You can encode to three different screen formats:
full If your video is full-screen (4:3 aspect ratio)
wide If your video is wide-screen (16:9 aspect ratio)
panavision If your video is theatrical wide-screen (2.35:1 aspect ratio)
If you choose wide or panavision, the video will be 'letterboxed' to fit
a standard TV screen. Most TV programs are 'full'; many movies are 'wide',
and some movies are 'panavision' (if they look very wide and skinny).
Please enter one of the screen formats listed above (full, wide, panavision).
screen format: wide
================================================== =======
In some videos, the volume may be too quiet or too loud. You can
fix this by normalizing the audio.
normalize audio (default yes) [y/n]?
================================================== =======
Your video can be run through some post-processing to increase quality
and remove noise. It can really improve the video quality, but may
slow down encoding somewhat.
use high quality (default yes) [y/n]?
================================================== =======
You are almost ready to encode your video. All I need now is the name
you want to use for the output file. You don't need to give a filename
extension (like .mpg); just type a name like 'MyVideo1'.
output name: nip2x6
================================================== =======
Great! I will now start tovid with the options you chose. Here is the
command that will be executed:
================================================== =======
tovid -normalize -dvd -ntsc -wide "/home/julie/keith_mp3/000Julie/Pan/Nip.Tuck.2/nip.tuck.2x06.avi" "nip2x6"
================================================== =======
Starting tovid in 5 seconds...
5 4 3 2 1 Here goes!
--------------------------------
tovid video conversion script
Version 0.18b
Written in 2004 by Eric Pierce
http://tovid.sourceforge.net/
--------------------------------
================================================== =======
Probing video for information. This may take several minutes...
Input file is 624 x 352 at 23.976 fps.
Reported running time is 2759 seconds.
Source is not 29.970 fps. Adjusting to 29.970 fps.
Scaling and/or padding with letterbox bars
Scaling 624 x 352 directly to 720 x 480
The encoding process is estimated to require 1931 MB of disk space.
You currently have 133490 MB available in this directory.
================================================== =======
Testing mplayer stability with -vc dummy option:
Test succeeded!
Creating WAV of audio stream with the following command:
mplayer -quiet -vo null -ao pcm "/home/julie/keith_mp3/000Julie/Pan/Nip.Tuck.2/nip.tuck.2x06.avi" -vc dummy -aofile stream.wav
================================================== =======
================================================== =======
Normalizing WAV audio...
================================================== =======
================================================== =======
Encoding WAV to ac3 format with the following command:
ffmpeg -i stream.wav -ab 224 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -acodec ac3 -y "nip2x6.ac3"
Audio encoding finished successfully
================================================== =======
Creating and encoding video stream using the following commands:
nice -n 0 mplayer -benchmark -nosound -noframedrop -noautosub -vo yuv4mpeg -vf-add pp=hb/vb/dr/al:f -vf-add hqdn3d -vf-add scale=720:480 "/home/julie/keith_mp3/000Julie/Pan/Nip.Tuck.2/nip.tuck.2x06.avi"
cat stream.yuv | yuvfps -r 30000:1001 -n -v 0 | nice -n 0 mpeg2enc -M 2 -a 3 -f 8 -b 8000 -g 4 -G 11 -D 10 -F 4 -v 0 -n n -4 2 -2 1 -q 5 --keep-hf -o "nip2x6.m2v"

That's a script my girlfriend is using right now to encode some niptuck eps I've captured across my NFS to dvd.

We must be using different versions of Tovid.

Notice it uses mplayer to extract the audio, then mplayer to resize, fps convert, then pipe out to mjpeg tools.

[courtrrb]

I just check the latest version of tovid Version 0.18b
It still has mencoder in it.
if you open it and check lines 895, 1020, 1023 you will see the mencode executable. Besides when you install it
it checks for the mplayer/mencoder executable. Since mencoder is part of the Mplayer project that would make us both right.