Where is the data rate specified to mux mpeg1 with VBR on?

[gmackenz]

It be nice to have the "echo command" back as a button...

I decided to try my hand at making a MPEG1 file for XVCD that has VBR instead of the default CBR in options. Quantizer was set to the default value of 6.

Now the muxing part in tools is failing and I don't know where to set this value in FFMPEGX.

INFO: [mplex] mplex version 2.2.1 ($Date: 2002/04/20 19:08:30 $)
INFO: [mplex] File /temp/VCD/SaiKano-01.m1v looks like an MPEG Video stream.
INFO: [mplex] File /temp/VCD/SaiKano-01.mp2 looks like an MPEG Audio stream.
INFO: [mplex] Found 1 video streams 1 MPEG audio streams and 0 AC3 streams
INFO: [mplex] Selecting VCD output profile
INFO: [mplex] Scanning for header info: Video stream e0 (/temp/VCD/SaiKano-01.m1v)
INFO: [mplex] VIDEO STREAM: e0
INFO: [mplex] Frame width : 720
INFO: [mplex] Frame height : 480
INFO: [mplex] Aspect ratio : 1:1.1250 (4:3 NTSC for 720x480/352x240 images)
INFO: [mplex] Picture rate : 23.976 frames/sec
INFO: [mplex] Bit rate : variable
INFO: [mplex] Vbv buffer size : 38912 bytes
INFO: [mplex] CSPF : 0
INFO: [mplex] Scanning for header info: Audio stream c0 (/temp/VCD/SaiKano-01.mp2)
INFO: [mplex] AUDIO STREAM:
INFO: [mplex] Audio version : 1.0
INFO: [mplex] Layer : 2
INFO: [mplex] CRC checksums : no
INFO: [mplex] Bit rate : 28672 bytes/sec (224 kbit/sec)
INFO: [mplex] Frequency : 44100 Hz
INFO: [mplex] Mode : 0 stereo
INFO: [mplex] Mode extension : 0
INFO: [mplex] Copyright bit : 0 no copyright
INFO: [mplex] Original/Copy : 0 copy
INFO: [mplex] Emphasis : 0 none
INFO: [mplex] SYSTEMS/PROGRAM stream:
**ERROR: [mplex] Variable bit-rate stream present: output stream (max) data-rate *must* be specified!

[major]

Normally the bitrate for VBR material is set automatically. Could you please upload me somewhere a small bit of your clip so as I can test?

[gmackenz]

Here's a 10 second clip:

http://66.159.222.151/~gordo/Movies/SaiKano-10-seconds.m1v

works when I use mux as vcd but not as XVCD

[paulhagstrom]

It be nice to have the "echo command" back as a button...

I'd second that. I attempted (for two minutes) last night to try to figure out what is causing these "no frame-rate specified" errors when encoding certain AVI files, but it took a certain amount of trickery to get the command back out because the clipboard is immediately clobbered by pbcopying in the date. What I ended up doing is making a symbolic link from /bin/sh to /bin/cat for one run so that I could see what it is trying to execute, but if the command could be echoed at the outset (or if a button could be added to show the command that was built), it'd be helpful for doing little tweaks/debugging.

On a somewhat unrelated note, my impression from something posted to another thread was that the cause of the "no frame-rate specified" bug is known and will be soon rectified. The extent of my attempts to fix it manually was to add -F 2 as one of the arguments to mpeg2enc, but that didn't seem to quite do it, and then I gave up. While we're waiting for the fix to get folded into the next revision, is there a quick one-sentence summary of what is missing from the command string?

And, of course, I can't avoid saying: ffmpegX is freaking fantastic. I remember what it was like to try to do any of this two years ago, and I know this must have been a phenomenal task to integrate everything this well. Thanks, major, for making it seem so easy.

[major]

Hi Paul, what's up? glad to see you there, and thank you very much for your kind words. Everything started from your page so you're somewhat the father of Unix video on Mac 8)

I'm trying to wrap more processes inside the app, as I would like it to allow users to operate without Terminal. It seems that the number of users asking me to make Terminal disappear totally outweigh that of advanced users like you wanting to tweaking Also echoing is sometimes difficult as the command line can exceed 2048 characters in some cases. However, I fully understand your request. I could probably implement an advanced users field to add custom CLI options.

As for your other question, -F 1 fixed the problem.