Hi,

I'm having trouble finding information on using gstreamer to convert videos from the command line. I've seen examples to convert audio and know it's possible to convert video (Thoggen does this with gstreamer) but what would the command be to execute this? I assume it will use gst-launch but there are so many following switches that it gets confusing. I'm interested in converting a DVD to OGG (as Thoggen does).

I ask this because Thoggen:

1) Doesn't remember my preferences (quality, picture size etc.)
2) Gives me a huge preview window that I do not need (while it is encoding)

I would find it much easier (quicker) to just insert a disc and run a command.

Thank you

Have you tried converting with ffmpeg or seeing if there is aplugin to use ffmpeg with gstreamer?

I have not tried ffmpeg, I'm interested in using gstreamer as I use it to convert audio (as well as play back audio and video). I would like to stay consistent and use it for my video converting too.

Yes I believe there is an ffmpeg plugin for gstreamer. My question is what would the command pipeline be?

Thanks

transmageddon - video transcoder for Linux and Unix systems built using GStreamer, however it isnt a CLI app.

Description: video transcoder for Linux and Unix systems built using GStreamer
Transmageddon supports almost any format as its input and can generate a very
large host of output files. The goal of the application was to help people to
create the files they need to be able to play on their mobile devices and for
people not hugely experienced with multimedia to generate a multimedia file
without having to resort to command line tools with ungainly syntaxes.
.
The currently supported codecs are:
* Containers:
- Ogg
- Matroska
- AVI
- MPEG TS
- flv
- QuickTime
- MPEG4
- 3GPP
- MXT
* Audio encoders:
- Vorbis
- FLAC
- MP3
- AAC
- AC3
- Speex
- Celt
* Video encoders:
- Theora
- Dirac
- H264
- MPEG2
- MPEG4/DivX5
- xvid
- DNxHD
.
It also provide the support for the GStreamer's plugins auto-search.
Homepage: http://www.linuxrising.org/transmageddon/

Thanks that software looks good but it doesn't seem geared towards converting DVDs; is that correct? I can't find a way to point it at the drive, only at the individual VOB files.

Well, I usually rip DVDs as follows:

1) Use vobcopy to rip the vob (mpeg2) from the DVD.
2) Use ffmpeg (or other converting program) to convert the video to whatever format you want.

There also exist programs specially designed for ripping like DVD::Rip and OGMRip.

H_TeXMeX_H,
I'm interested in trying ffmpeg. In the man page it suggests:

ffmpeg -i snatch_1.vob -f avi -vcodec mpeg4 -b 800k -g 300 -bf 2 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k snatch.avi

But I would like something that can recognise the main title of the DVD (there are a number of VOBs). If that is possible, would you mind giving me an example command that you run to convert the VOBs to a single file (MPEG, OGG or similar).

Thanks

Well, vobcopy should recognize a different title for each DVD it rips. Now, the title is usually not too readable, but each one is different.

As for converting the vob using ffmpeg to say an Xvid that can be played on Divx certified players, I usually run:

That's for a 2-pass encode. Make sure to change the output resolution, frame rate, aspect, GOP (should be 10 x frame rate as you can see 240), audio bitrate and audio sample rate (keep async equal to the sample rate to prevent A/V desync). You can use a lower qscale for higher quality and vice versa.