Converting wmv to mpeg

CrownAmbassador · 02-03-2008, 07:59 AM

I've been doing a lot of searching around trying to find a app that will convert wmv to mpeg. I found mencode and a few others, but I can't get one of them to work. Can someone explain to me what to do please?

dive · 02-03-2008, 08:00 AM

For mplayer/mencoder to work with wmv make sure you have the right codecs installed.

CrownAmbassador · 02-03-2008, 08:04 AM

And what codecs are that? I can play all common formats.

dive · 02-03-2008, 08:23 AM

Which codec package do you have installed? There used to be 'essentials' and 'extra' packages, but on their site I can onyl see essentials now.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Going to upgrade mine anyway. I do see wmv codecs in there.

CrownAmbassador · 02-03-2008, 08:32 AM

I'm trying to follow the directions here http://en.linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_Convert_video_files but as far as I can see I need the lavc codecs? The only codecs I have installed that runs everything i gstreamer. Can I download lavc somewhere?

David the H. · 02-03-2008, 09:18 AM

There should be a gstreamer plugin for ffmpeg available, which will give it access to the libavcodec. You can also convert directly with ffmpeg.

But in my experience, vlc media player usually decodes wmv better than lavc. Video artifacts and audio/video sync especially are often problems when using lavc options. You can use the stream-save option to convert the video to mpeg or other formats, though the output options are rather limited.

If you're on a 32-bit system, you might also benefit from the win32codecs, a package of proprietary codecs including Windows Media.

Avidemux is a good gui frontend for video conversion, and there's also a fairly new gui for ffmpeg called vive that you might try out.

H_TeXMeX_H · 02-03-2008, 01:13 PM

I think this can also be done using ffmpeg, which is IMO, much easier and gives better output than using mencoder.

CrownAmbassador · 02-04-2008, 06:35 AM

This is what I got when searching for a gstreamer plugin for ffmpeg http://gmyth.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GMythStream

I did what it says on there (the installation part), but now it talks about transcoding things recorded with mythtv. So I don't know if I was heading in the right direction.

I installed VLC and the following plugins:vlc-plugin-arts vlc-plugin-esd vlc-plugin-ggi vlc-plugin-glide vlc-plugin-sdl vlc-plugin-svgalib x264

You can see in the code belowe what I ran, but it doesn't want to work. Once again I don't know if this is the right way of doing it.

Code:

crownambassador@Vista:~/untitled folder$ mencoder Achmed.wmv -ovc vlc -oac vlc -o Am.mpg
MEncoder 2:1.0~rc1-0ubuntu13.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T7100  @ 1.80GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 13)
CPUflags: Type: 6 MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Option ovc: Unknown suboption vlc
Error parsing option on the command line: -ovc

Exiting... (error parsing command line)

Also, it doesn't seem like Avidemux supports the wmv input according to this site.

And when trying to install vive, this is what I get:

Code:

crownambassador@Vista:~/Themes$ sudo dpkg -i vive_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb 
Selecting previously deselected package vive.
(Reading database ... 97309 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking vive (from vive_2.0.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of vive:
 vive depends on libavcodec0d (>= 0.cvs20060823); however:
  Package libavcodec0d is not installed.
 vive depends on libavformat0d (>= 0.cvs20060823); however:
  Package libavformat0d is not installed.
 vive depends on libdvdcss2; however:
  Package libdvdcss2 is not installed.
 vive depends on libavformat0d; however:
  Package libavformat0d is not installed.
 vive depends on libdvdcss2; however:
  Package libdvdcss2 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing vive (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 vive

I search around for some of these packages, but can't find anything that I can use. Only amd64 packages.

CrownAmbassador · 02-05-2008, 01:21 PM

Any ideas?

dive · 02-05-2008, 03:50 PM

vlc isn't a valid video codec. Maybe you need to recompile mplayer to support that. You do with most things.

Do

mplayer -ovc help

to get a list of supported codecs, and have a look in the man page. I'm pretty sure that mplayer/mencoder will convert wmv without much trouble. The trick is to get it to play one, then you know you have the codec installed. Then go from there.

linkstack · 03-02-2008, 03:44 AM

I think it should be:
mencoder -ovc help