Video (.mpg/.avi) to iPod (.mp4) converter

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 11:18:09AM -0500, lsorense wrote:
> A possible useful link:
> http://groups.google.ca/group/linux.gentoo.user/browse_frm/thread/bd0a98464bad5d85/33e7b9aa420413d5?lnk=st&q=transcode+ipod+video+linux&rnum=1&hl=en#33e7b9aa420413d5
> 
> Seems someone has managed to use ffmpeg to do it.

I tried following the instructions on that page with a vob of a movie
trailer I had lying around, and ffmpeg segfaulted.  So i upgraded to the
version of ffmpeg available for debian unstable, and then it ran just
fine, and generated a small .mov file.

File says this:
austinpowers.vob:          MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex
austinpowers.vob.ipod.mov: Apple QuickTime movie (unoptimized)

Mplayer says:
Playing austinpowers.vob.ipod.mov.

Quicktime/MOV file format detected.
--------------
MOV track #0: 1138 chunks, 1138 samples
MOV: Found MPEG4 movie Elementary Stream Descriptor atom (79)!
Image size: 320 x 240 (24 bpp)
Display size: 320 x 240
Fourcc: mp4v  Codec: 'xvid'
--------------
MOV track #1: 1771 chunks, 1771 samples
Audio bits: 16  chans: 2  rate: 48000
Audio extra header: len=91  fcc=0x77617665
MOV: Found MPEG4 audio Elementary Stream Descriptor atom (39)!
Fourcc: mp4a
--------------
MOV: longest streams: A: #1 (1771 samples)  V: #0 (1138 samples)
VIDEO:  [mp4v]  320x240  24bpp  29.970 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s!
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio) decoder)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
==========================================================================

So it appears to be in mp4v at 320x240, with aac audio.  Might work then.

This was done with ffmpeg version cvs20060101-0.2.

The commands were:
export file=austinpowers.vob
ffmpeg -i $file -cropleft 4 -cropright 10 -deinterlace -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 384 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -acodec aac -ab 96 -g 300 -pass 1 -passlogfile mpg2ipod_log -f mov $file.pass1.mov
ffmpeg -i $file -cropleft 4 -cropright 10 -deinterlace -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 384 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -acodec aac -ab 96 -g 300 -pass 2 -passlogfile mpg2ipod_log -f mov $file.ipod.mov
rm -f $file.pass1.mov

I don't have an ipod to test on, so who knows if it is right or not.

Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml