Convert TO Grayscale Difficulties

[robindean]

Hi all.

I have a color .mp4 source file which is destined to be loaded into flash.

Both left and right sides need to be cropped by 100px before finally being converted to grayscale.

On Mac, the now defunct VisualHub was able to do the cropping but ffmpeg grayscale flags never worked.

I opted to try and install ffmpeg on my system and it, of course, failed to compile (yuck).

Is there a simple way to open the video's raw code, extract and discard all of it's color information so that only grayscale remains?

This would, as an added bonus, lower the file size ... correct?

I need a free solution that won't cause a lossy end result as I'm already forced to re-encode via v-hub.

Thanks in advance.

[aedipuss]

hi and welcome to the forum.

for future reference there is a mac forum where you might be more likely to get mac specific info. for now you might want to edit your post and change the thread description to add "on a mac"

i read the post but can't be of any assistance, sorry.

[poisondeathray]

Both cropping and converting to grayscale will require re-encoding

Avidemux is crossplatform and has both these filters

You can encode directly to your final format goal from avidemux (or encode to a lossless intermediate for import into your other application)

[robindean]

Thanks, poison. I appreciate that re-encoding is unavoidable. I mostly want to be sure that I don't re-encode twice (one for crop, another for gray).

Also, thanks aedipus ... I've since updated my signature to reflect the two computers I own.