Just downloaded ffmpegX ~ doesn't work ~ what does 'drop a movie here' mean

[JenniferSea]

Hi,

I've just downloaded ffmpegX to my Mac Mini, but I can't get it to work.

Under 'Source Format', it says to 'drop a movie or audio file that you want to convert' ~ what does this mean?

Underneath this, it says 'From' and then has a box. This box just says 'unrecognized'.

I did 'open' a file above (a quicktime .mov video i'm trying to convert to mpeg), and put something for 'save as' and signified the 'target format'.

When I click encode it appears to do something, to work, but nothing appears where I said to save it to.

I figure it has something to do with the 'From' box that just has 'unrecognized' in it.

I'm not very computer savvy.

Any help is so appreciated.

[tbluewater]

Right above you, it says 'online manual.' It's made for people like you, I suppose. Or watch a video tutorial (VTC). You can find it by typing 'VTC' with the search function at the top.

[major]

If all of your movies are always unrecognized, make sure that ffmpegX is in the /Applications folder and that your disk name does not contain spaces or special characters.

[JenniferSea]

Thanks so much for your replies. I appreciate your help very much.

tbluewater ~ what do you mean 'right above you' for the online manual? I'll keep looking for it. Probably obvious.

Major, I checked, and my harddrive is named 'Macintosh HD' so I don't think there is any problem there. It is in the applications folder. EDITED TO ADD: it looks like there is a space in the name "MacIntosh HD' ~ is this a problem?

I think I may have gotten it to work. When I clicked on the info button after trying to encode, I saw this: 'incorrect frame rate'.

I then went to the video tab and noticed the 'framerate' field was empty. So I chose one totally randomly. And then I think it worked! The quality wasn't great, but I think that is my fault.

Questions :

• Which frame rate should I choose? Does it matter?
  
  I want an mpeg-1 format. I don't see it under the target formats to convert to?
  
  My source format box STILL says 'Unrecognized' ~ is this okay? What does it mean? It seems to work anyway?
  
  Still wondering what 'drop' file means??

Thank you! I am trying really hard! I appreciate any help.

PS I have uploaded a pdf of a screenshot of my program, showing the 'Unrecognized' in the source format box. Can't figure how to get it into a picture to post.

picture%201.pdf

[JenniferSea]

Really sorry, tbluewater, I just realized you've told me where to find the online tutorial. Thanks, I will check it out.

[Case]

Which frame rate should I choose? Does it matter?

Same as source, whenever possible. Try opening you movie in QuickTime Player, Window>Show Movie Info (Cmd-I). Under "FPS", it lists the frame rate for movies.

I want an mpeg-1 format. I don't see it under the target formats to convert to?

Try "VCD".

My source format box STILL says 'Unrecognized' ~ is this okay? What does it mean? It seems to work anyway?

If it works anyway, then that's not bad at all.

Still wondering what 'drop' file means??

It means: use "drag-and-drop" to open a file into the application.

[JenniferSea]

Wow, thanks so much Case for your time!

That helps a lot.

[miss_evee]

hi yeah im so a newbie at this whole ffmegx thing.
i downloaded it hoping it would take my movie, in video_ts form to covert it to play on my video ipod.
now it advertises that it WILL convert a video_ts file but when i have it in it says that it wont. why?
and what are binaries?
i dont' get it. where do you get them? i copied the link they gave me and all it did was show me a site with lots of html looking stuff.
need help PLEASEEE
plus i dont know how to use this thing either so im just going under this person's posts hoping someone will help thanks

[Case]

Please start a new topic if you are not responding to the previous post. Thank you.
You can find the button on the ffmpegX forum page, right above the topic list.

[JenniferSea]

So I am still trying to get this to work.

As I indicated above, this program does work somewhat, as I AM able to convert my .mov files into ".mp4 mpeg-4" using ffmpegx ~ this works.

But for my purposes, I need a "mpeg-1" video.

I tried 'VCD' and some other target formats, but they aren't working. The log just says **ERROR: input mpeg stream has been deemed invalid -- aborting".

Questions :

• My hard drive is called "Macintosh HD" ~ does anyone know if this could cause any problems since it obviously has a space in the name? Wondering if I should try and reinstall after renaming it to MacintoshHD. It seems strange that this is a problem. Does everyone just rename their hard drive? This is a default name. And, since I can get it work for one format, this makes me think installing isn't the problem. What does anyone think?
  
  I did try looking up the online tutorials. All I saw was a tutorial about compressing, which I am not interested in. If anyone has any links to something that could help a newby like me, it would be appreciated.

Any other clues, let know.

thanks a lot.
Jen in Seattle

[JenniferSea]

also getting this error ~ anyone know what that is?:

**ERROR: [mplex] MUX STATUS: Frame data under-runs detected!

[tomlee59]

Since it's easy enough to remove the space in the HD's name, why not just try it and see what happens? FfmpegX is actually a collection of many separate programs, so just because one part works doesn't always mean that the others will be equally tolerant. Experimentation is definitely in order.

As for "compression," you need to understand that *every* one of those formats is a form of compression. All of them. They're just _different types_ of compression. That is, each of those standards makes different decisions about what information to throw away in order to reduce filesize. They make different tradeoffs between the visibility of what errors they've introduced, and the filesize reductions they're able to achieve. That's why all of those tutorials mention compression. So, whether or not you're interested in compression, that's what you're inevitably getting.

Now, for your other questions: You can definitely choose MPEG1 as one of the options. Selecting VCD automatically does this for you, and auto-sets a bunch of other parameters, too (like frame rate, resolution, and audio bitrate). You can also choose one of two sub-programs within ffmpegX to perform the conversion into MPEG1 (select these from the Preset pulldown menu). These are ffmpeg and the other is mpeg2enc. Try one. If it doesn't work, try the other one. That's what I do. ffmpeg is much faster, so use it if you can, but it has different limitations and capabilities than mpeg2enc. If ffmpeg fails on you, try mpeg2enc.

As for your mux status problem, if the first step in the mpeg encoding didn't work, then muxing will fail. Since you're a newbie, maybe these terms mean nothing to you. A video file has two components (streams) -- a video and audio stream. These two streams are first separately converted (to mpeg1, for example), and then the converted streams must be rejoined (multiplexed, or "muxed" for short) into a single file. If the individual streams are defective in some way, muxing will certainly fail. That's what's happening to you. Solve the first problem first, and the other will likely go away, too.