---- Q: I am using version 0.6.x where x <= 14, and I'm having some sort of problem A: Upgrade to the CVS version, this is the only version that is supported. --- Q: How do I obtain transcode from CVS A: There are instructions available at http://www.transcoding.org/#cvs (tibit) --- Q: I now got transcode from CVS, how do I compile and install it? A: See the INSTALL file. --- Q: So I got transcode from CVS and compiled it according to the directions in the INSTALL file, and now I (still) have some sort of problem A: Join the transcode-users mailing list (see www.transcoding.org) and check the archive if your problem has been discussed at the mailing list before. --- Q: I still have a problem and it hasn't been discussed before. A: If your problem is that transcode "hangs" without doing anything, that is a known problem which is hard to solve. Often running transcode this way: "env LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.0 transcode ..." seems to help. --- Q: I still have a problem and it's not that transcode hangs. A: If your problem is that transcode is killed by a signal (e.g. segmentation fault), perform these steps (carefully!) - recompile transcode for debugging (see the INSTALL file for details) - install it - start transcode from within gdb like this: $ gdb transcode (gdb) - when gdb stops, type these commands: (gdb) where (gdb) bt full - now file a bug report in transcode-users, including: * the complete transcode command line your're using * the complete output of the transcode run, with option -q 2 * the output of gdb - only with a full bug report we can do ANYTHING at all. --- Q: How do I make a copy of a DVD-9 A: For german reading users here is a link http://linuxwiki.de/DvdAuthoring (felix) --- Q: Finally, there's the questions about the justly infamous ffmpeg.cfg file. What are all the parameters and what do they mean? A: The easiest way to find out is to look at the mplayer manpage at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/manpage.html#CODEC%20SPECIFIC%20ENCODING%20OPTIONS%20(MENCODER%20ONLY) and scroll down to "lavc"
If you\'re just going to encode to (S)VCD or DVD, you\'d better use the profile support. In transcode, you can put these options into a config file (use -q2 to generate one) called ffmpeg.cfg (ems, tibit) --- Q: What's the difference between -j and -Y? A: This one I know. The difference between -j and -Y is only the order that transcode does the clipping. In the manual page we find The video frame operations ordering is fixed: "-j -I -X -B -Z -Y -r -z -l -k -K -G -C" (executed from left to right). So if one needs to do frame clipping and resizing, in a specific order, he can choose the apropriate transcode options. For instance, if one wants to clip and then resize the video frame, in this order, he can use -j (clip) and -B (resize). In this case -Y and -B would not work, as the operation -Y is done after -B. There are still two other options for clipping: --pre_clip (executed before -j) and --post_clip (executed after -Y). (ems) --- Q: How do I transcode an avi to mpeg? PA: (Partial answer) In this form, your question cannot easily be answered. You're talking of _container_ formats (avi, mpeg) while you probably mean _codec_ formats.
A _container_ is a file format designed to hold both audio and video (and sometimes more) data in a way that a player application can play them back properly (that means, with audio and video synchronised).
Examples of container formats are avi, mpeg-ps, mpeg-ts, asf, quicktime, mp4.
The _codec_ on the other hand, determines what's inside the _container_, it is the (compressed) video or audio data itself.
Examples of video codecs are: mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg4 (aka "divx", "xvid"), realvideo, wmv, dv.
Examples of audio codecs are: mpeg1-layer2 (aka "mp2"), mpeg1-layer3 (aka "mp3"), wma, aac, pcm.
BTW in avi container files, there's mostly mpeg4 video content and mp3 audio content (although this is absolutely not obligatory, use tcprobe to find out). If you want to burn material on a SVCD or DVD, you need to have the video in mpeg2, the audio in mp2 (or ac3 in case of DVD) and both of these in a mpeg-ps (program stream aka "vob") container. With this information you should be able to refrase your question a get a proper answer ;-) (ems) --- Q: Peoples' faces are purple! A1: This probably means that the u and v planes (Cr/Cb) are being swapped. As there is no clean definition whether u should be Cr or Cb (and vv), this easily happens. (ems) A2: I solved this problem with the -k option to transcode. People are no longer purple. Hence, if you're transcoding from YUY2 to YV12 and you get purple people, you need to use the -k option. (ems) --- Q: People are upside-down! A: Use -z. Usually it goes away when you turn on YUV mode with -V. (tibit) --- Q: I have installed latest transcode tool from source and then from rpm. Whenever I run program it falls over as it cannot find export_mp2enc.so. A: RPM packages of some distributions are not complete. This is a general problem. If you want to use the mpeg2enc export module, you will have to compile transcode yourself, or try to find a complete rpm on the net. (ems) --- Q: Do I need the avifile library to write AVI files? A: No. Transcode has its own library for writing AVI files. The avifile library is used to enable support for win32 binary codecs. The libavcodec from the ffmpeg project has a free implementation for most of these codecs anyway. (tibit) --- Q: Help! I got lots of "no"s after running ./configure! A: This is not necessarily a bad thing. transcode has configure checks for some very "obscure" import and export codecs which you probably never use anyway.
If you are sure you have a specific library installed and transcode still does not find it, have a look at config.log to find out the reason. (tibit) --- Q: When trying to read a DVD I get something like (dvd_reader.c) no support for DVD reading configured - exit. What am I missing, ie what do I need to do to fix it? A: You have probably installed transcode from source and you are missing the dvdread library. This library (including the -devel packages) must be installed at compile time and transcode must find it. If transcode found it, it will print "DVD navigation support with libdvdread yes" at the end of the configure run. (tibit) --- Q: I am missing the mp3 import module (import_mp3.so)! A: You need to have a recent lame library installed. Including all header files (-devel package) (tibit) --- Q: How do I calculate the best tcrequant number from within a script when going from a DVD9 to a DVD5? A: Once you have separated (using tcextract) the audio and the video, get the file sizes of the audio and video files. If you are burning to a DVD5, the maximum image size is 4700000000. So the following equation will give you a 'best fit' number. 1.04 is a fudge factor to leave space for the file system and other overhead.
If you are including more that one audio stream or a subtitle stream, those filesizes must also be subtracted from the maximum dvd image size.
	requant_factor = (video_size / (dvdmax_size - audio_size)) * 1.04;
	tcrequant -i ofile.m2v -o movie.m2v -f requant_factor
	
(cooper) --- Q: What options to set in ~/.transcode/ffmpeg.cfg for encoding to dvd with ffmpeg, when not using profile support A:
vrc_minrate=0
        vrc_maxrate=9800
	vrc_buf_size=1792

        
If ratecontrol still is insufficient, try:
	lmin=0
	lmax=10000

	
(try lower lmax if still not right) (ems). --- Q: What does "Can't step back 17" (or similar) means? A: This message comes from the mp3 decoder (lame). It means (since mp3 has interdependent chunks) that one ore more previous mp3 chunks are missing "Can't step back ...". This usually happens when the file was split at some time. There is not much you can do about it. (tibit) --- Q: I have problems encoding with the divx4linux libraries from divx.com A: Transcode ships two divx encoder modules. One is divx4 and one is divx5. Please note that the `4' in divx_4_linux only stands for the word "for" it does not denote the version number.
Use -y divx4 if you have a really old version of the divx4linux libraries installed. The divx5 export module is usuable depended on the divx4linux libraries you had installed when you compiled transcode. The Developers from divx.com changed their API in a backwards incompatible way causeing that -y divx5 either supports the new API or the old one. They are mutually exclusive. So if you have problems with -y divx4 try -y divx5.
Please note that the current version of the divx4linux libraries available form divx.com have a bug on they may segfault on Pentium4 systems. There is another bug in older versions of divx4linux where it crashes when writting data to a FAT32 windows partition. Look at http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/doc/faq.cipp#faq11
--- Q: transcode cannot find libdivxdecore.so/libdivxencore.so/libxvidcore.so ... A: The best place to put these libraries is the transcode libdir (/usr/local/lib/transcode/ by default). You can find out the libdir of your transcode installation by executing tcmodinfo -p. Transcode will look into this libdir first when searching for a library. When that fails, transcode will look at the standard library locations. You should make sure that the location of the library is in /etc/ld.so.conf and don't forget to run ldconfig afterwards. You do not need to put the transcode libdir into the dlloader config file. --- Q: I have VOB files from a DVD which transcode won\'t encode correctly. At some point, there\'s a \"broken stream\" error, and in the resulting AVI the picture exhibits some artifacts at that point and the AV sync is gone from there on. The VOB files can be played back perfectly without any problems with various players, though. A: First, concatenate the VOB files into a single file all.vob . Next, use mencoder to generate an AVI file:
	mencoder all.vob -o all.avi -ovc copy -oac copy

	
Then process the AVI file with transcode. If mencoder crashes (as it did on my system), use
	mencoder all.vob -o all_noaudio.avi -ovc copy -nosound

	
which will give you an AVI without sound. Transcode this:
	transcode -i all_noaudio.avi -x mpeg2,null -y xvid,null \\
	          -V -R 1 -o /dev/null --print_status 100
	transcode -i all_noaudio.avi -x mpeg2,null -y xvid,null \\
	          -V -R 2 -o transcoded_noaudio.avi --print_status 100

	
Assuming that the \"broken\" AVI file transcode generated before is called broken.avi, extract the audio with
	tcextract -i broken.avi -x mp3 -a 0 > all.mp3

	
and finally merge audio and video with
	avimerge -i all_noaudio.avi -p all.mp3 -o complete.avi

	
This can probably be improved; I was happy enough that it worked. (meier) --- Q: How can I save the audio track of a DVD directly to a WAVE file suitable for burning onto an AudioCD? A: Suppose you want the audio from title 2, all chapters and you want the second audio stream:
	  transcode -x null,dvd -i /dev/dvd -T2,-1 -a 1 \\
	  -y wav -J resample -E 44100 -o foo.wav

	
The resampling is needed since DVD audio is usually sampled at 48 kHz. (tibit) --- Q: How do I transfer my .avi .mpg .mov. asf .wmv etc. files to DVD so that they playback on my stand-alone DVD player ? A: A step by step howto can be found at http://mightylegends.zapto.org/dvd/dvdauthor_howto.php (rickfharris) --- Q: What do I need to get the import_im and import_imlist modules? A: These modules use the ImageMagick library from http://www.imagemagick.org --- Q: I do have ImageMagick including the -devel package installed and still get no import_im and import_imlist module. A: Some distributions ship a ImageMagick-devel package which also needs bzip2-devel package installed. Check config.log for details. ---