NOTE: Making movies from image files using mencoder / ffmpeg

Here's a site. It describes something I wanted to do / did half a year ago but made no blog-post of it.

What I originally wanted to do was to have a single image as a video, and put some music to it and post it on youtube.

I somehow managed it, but I have no idea anymore how.
And I also found mp3tube, so I don't really need this anymore, if I don't care to have a special picture for my music.

Mplayer is too quiet

Actually my problem was only, that MPlayer's own volume wasn't turned up.
Key 9 and 0 are used for volume - and + on your keyboard.

However, here's the manual on MPlayer volume adjustment.

MPlayer error messages

I get this when I open anything in MPlayer:
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111)
MPlayer SVN-r1.0~rc3+svn20090426-4.4.3 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing Movie.mp4.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO: [avc1] 800x440 24bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
[VO_TDFXFB] Can't open /dev/fb0: Permission denied.
[VO_3DFX] Unable to open /dev/3dfx.

To get rid of all of this, do the following:
1.)Turn bluetooth on.
2.) Disable LIRC support.: ~$ sudo gedit /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf and add the line: nolirc=yes
3.) Define X11 as default video output: in ~$ sudo gedit /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf search for the line: # vo=xv,x11 -> uncomment (remove # from the beginning of the line), change to vo=x11, or whatever is the best.

Editing, manipulating Subtitles

I used Subtitle Processor under Windows XP.

Under Ubuntu:
1.) Subtitle Editor (from Synaptic): something is wrong with the input methods and I cannot type in anything, and I don't like the environment either, so Subtitle Editor is DROPPED.

2.) AegiSub: nope, it didn't play the sounds, and I didn't like the environment.

3.) Gnome Subtitles: LIKE :-) Can do shifting easily.

DVD ripping with MEncoder

From where I learned:
MEncoder DVD to MPEG-4
Making a high quality MPEG-4 (divx) rip of a DVD movie (mplayerhq manual)
HOWTO: rip DVDs in MPEG-4 (ubuntuforums)

And this turned out to be the most useful:
SimpleRip: Ripping / Encoding DVD-s to Xvid with MEncoder

An automated way should be AcidRip, but it somehow got the code messed-up, when shell-script exported, and I had to correct it manually. What I learned from it is how to handle frameno.avi and divx2pass.log:

#!/bin/sh
echo "***********************************************************"
echo "Automated script created by AcidRip - http://acidrip.sf.net"
echo "***********************************************************"

unlink frameno.avi 2> /dev/null
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/dvd  -aid 129 -oac mp3lame -lameopts mode=2:cbr:br=128  -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=740:vhq:v4mv:vqmin=3:vpass=1 -vf crop=672:432:24:22    -o "/dev/null"
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/dvd  -aid 129 -oac mp3lame -lameopts mode=2:cbr:br=128  -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=740:vhq:v4mv:vqmin=3:vpass=2 -vf crop=672:432:24:22    -o "/home/user/movie.avi"
unlink divx2pass.log  2> /dev/null

As for the subtitle (.idx + .sub = VOBSUB format):
I want to convert them to SRT.
--> I used AVIDEMUX (downloaded from Synaptic) It worked fine.

DVD Burning

I plugged in my NEC AD-7201A (manufactured in April 2008) DVD writer drive via USB with the intent to burn a lot of DVD data disks.

1.) I tried Gnome's own burner software, but it's not really working anyway (It's stuck at "starting to record, after finishing a complete simulation), so I downloaded k3b.

2.) k3b seems to work fine. And it's very similar to Nero, which I used previously.