I want to convert AVI files to DivX. Can someone recommend a good program
to use on Slackware 12.2.

Thanks

Avidemux is pretty good and easy to use.

Mmm, AVI is a container format. DivX is a codec.

This means that an AVI file can be already encoded in DivX. In any case, you don't convert from AVI to DivX, you convert from mpeg to DivX, from Xvid to DivX or whatever. The AVI will also contain an audio stream probably, and that will be encoded in something else as well (mp3, ac3. vorbis or whatever).

To identify the kind of streams that a given AVI file has you can use the command "file", for example, this is from a random video that I have on my home dir:

This concrete avi file has a XviD video stream and an ac3 audio stream.

Thanks for the replies.

I downloaded Avidemux and the required dependencies. Can you give me some advice on converting this file to a DivX file. I want to play it on my DVD player. I don't have experience with this.

Thanks.

Have you tried playing the file without re-encoding it? If your DVD player can play DivX it can probably play this xvid file too. DivX and Xvid are pretty much the same thing.

That should play just fine on your DVD player as long as it supports DivX (it has a label on the drive). So just burn it to a CD or DVD and put it into the drive and it will work.

I checked into the player it doesn't support DivX or xvid according to this page:
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers/toshiba-sd4700/990
Sorry for the mistake. I thought it could play Divx.

It supports:
Video formats:
VCD, SVCD, JPG,
Audio formats:
MP3 max 320kbit/s
It plays audio CDs as well as DVD-audio.

I wasn't sure how to open up the avi file.
Can I convert this file to VCD or SVCD to play on the DVD player?
I don't have a DVD Burner on my computer.

Thanks.

Yeah, you can, i believe avidemux has such an option.

Here is the command for VCD from the avidemux wiki (using the command-line program)

avidemux2 --load /path/to/24.episode.avi --audio-process \
--audio-normalize --audio-resample 44100 --audio-codec MP2 \
--audio-bitrate 224 --output-format PS --video-process \
--vcd-res --video-codec VCD --save output.mpg --quit

Then you will have the file encoded to a vcd format.

To get it onto CD you will need the program vcdimager. The simplest command is

vcdimager output.mpg

That will give you a bin/cue file pair that any CD burner program can burn onto CD.

Then insert in DVD player and enjoy (it's a good episode!)

I made a mpg file using the gui of avidemux and used vcdimager to make the bin and cue files. I burnt them to a cdrw as well as a cdr. It wouldn't work.

I then tried the commandline:
I got a popup with Avidemux and I built a time map and updated the index, set the aspect ratio 1:1 and 4:3, set vcd audio to 44.1khz mp2
It then gave me a crash backtrace. I entered ok the first time and then cancel. Either way it then stopped after that. I didn't get a file completed.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

Sorry, I'm not really familiar with avidemux. Did you ensure the mpg which you created from the GUI was VCD spec (http://www.videohelp.com/vcd)? Other than that, burning the bin/cue as files rather than images is the only thing I can think that could go wrong.

The try instead to use ffmpeg: