GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
by Graham Williams
|
|
GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams |
|
|||
Video Formats | 
|
There are a variety of video formats. You have many choices for the format you would like to convert to. avi files are essentially a container for video encodings. An AVI file might contain, for example, a DivX encoded video.
Here is an example of taking a single chapter (happens to be chapter 19 of title 1 of one of my DVDs) and encoding in several formats (where there is a choice, they are 2620 kbit/s, but VCD is only 1152):
| Type | Ext | Time | Size | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOB | .vob | 2m | 239MB | Audio somewhat poor. |
| SVCD | .mpg | 23m | 99MB | Very blocky. |
| VCD | .mpg | 16m | 51MB | No choice of kbit/s. |
| divx4 | ||||
| divx5 | .avi | 10m | 94MB | |
| xvid | .avi | 10m | 103MB | |
| xvidcvs | .avi | 10m | 103MB | |
| ffmpeg | ||||
| fame | ||||
| af6 |
But to determine the best procedure, format and parameters for grabbing a DVD into a compressed form suitable for hard disk storage is not a trivial exercise. For example, deinterlacing may be required, but it is (almost) only needed for material which was shot using a video camera, or transmitted for TV.
The following table summarise some of the file format capabilities of various players:
| Player | mov | avi | wmv | rm | mpg | mp3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xine | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| VLC | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Mplayer | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| RealPlayer | no | no | no | yes | no | yes |