ive got a load of avi's the video data is MJPG and the audio data is PCM, i want to deinterlace the video, and compress it to divx(xvid) i want the audio data compressed as mp3, can someone either point me to some nice and simple documentation or give me a command.

cheers

Try installing avidemux (http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/). It is a graphical way to edit avi files. I've only used it for splitting big avi files, but you should be able to save as a new avi file with different audio and video codec. I'm not sure if it will do deinterlacing.

Another option would be mencoder. I've only used it for converting vob files to avi, but you should be able to transcode the avi file. Here is the command I use for vob files:

mencoder movie.vob -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1000:vhq:vpass=1 -vop
scale=640:480,lavcdeint -oac mp3lame -lameopts
abr:br=128 -o movie.avi

followed by:

mencoder movie.vob -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1000:vhq:vpass=2 -vop
scale=640:480,lavcdeint -oac mp3lame -lameopts
abr:br=128 -o movie.avi

That generates a avi file with a video bit rate of 1000, vhq="very high quality", -vop options are to scale the video to 640x480 (full screen) and lavcdeint deinterlaces the source video. The lavc codec is as good as xvid, but you can use xvid if you want. The audio is encoded to mp3 using lame with an average bit rate of 128. You may be able to modify that to use an avi file as the input with a different avi file as the output. Look at the mplayer documentation in "man mencoder".

ive got mencoder working fine now, thanks

<edit> ive installed the unstable avidemux and it works great

ive tried avidemux to edit my avi's to cut out a little bit, it works for the xvid encoded avi's but doesnt work for the MJPEG ones, i dont really want to have to encode stuff then cut it out as my machine isnt very fast. this is the outpuit of avidemux if it means anything to anyone.

If mencoder is working for doing your transcoding, you can encode only a portion of the file by adding the following:


mencoder movie.vob -ovc lavc -lavcopts
vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1000:vhq:vpass=1 -vop
scale=640:480,lavcdeint -oac mp3lame -lameopts
abr:br=128 -o movie.avi -ss 01:05:00 -endpos 00:05:00

Followed by the same command with vpass=2.

The "-ss" option tells mencoder to start 1 hour and 5 minutes into the input file. The "-endpos" option tells it to encode 5 minutes of video. Using the above command, it would encode from 1:05 to 1:10. The "endpos" is accurate (it will encode exactly the amount of time given). However, I've found the "-ss" option doesn't match the actual video timing. I usually guess "-ss" and encode a few seconds to see where I actually am in the video, then adjust "-ss" by trial and error until it is starting to encode from the desired point in the video.

There is a great guide that helped me get started with this located here: http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4lin...gle/index.html