Georgi’s Blog

Fun with mencoder and mkv

About a week ago I had to save two DVD disks on my hdd and instead of wasting 9GB of disk space I started playing with mencoder. I looked a lot on the internet, lots of options, lots of ways to do it… it not very easy. In the end I decided on the following:

• x264 video codec
• mp3 audio codec( in my case, the audio wasn’t important, otherwise I would’ve decided on AAC)
• mkv container
• mencoder, mkvtools and ogmtools for the procedure

Here are the commands.
Info about the chapters and ripping the title on the HDD:

dvdxchap -t 1 /dev/dvd > 1.chapters
mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile 1.vob

First pass only analyzes the video and writes a log file for the second pass:

rm *.log #remove old logs
mencoder -v 1.vob \
-alang en \#language english
-vf yadif \#yadif deinterlacer
-ovc x264 \ #codec x264
-x264encopts subq=4:bframes=4:b_pyramid:weight_b:pass=1:psnr:bitrate=1800:turbo=1 \ #1800 bitrate gives a good size to qualit ratio
-oac copy \ #for now only copy the audio
-ofps 24000/1001 \#approx 23.9 fps
-slang en \
-o /dev/null


Second pass:

mencoder -v 1.vob \
-alang en \
-vf yadif \
-ovc x264 \
-x264encopts subq=5:partitions=4x4:8x8dct:frameref=3:me=hex:bframes=4:b_pyramid:pass=2:psnr:bitrate=1800 \
-oac mp3lame \ #mp3lame audio codec
-lameopts abr:br=256:vol=7 \ #256kbits bitrate
-ofps 24000/1001 \
-o 1.avi #write everything as avi for now


At this stage we have a perfectly working AVI at around 1800MB per 4.3GB DVD. I, however, want the chapter information from the DVD. The next step for me is to open the DVD and start going trough the chapters and editing the titles in the 1.chapters file from Chapter 01 Chapter 02… to something that makes more sense.

Then I merge the audio and video from the .avi and the chapter information in one .mkv file:

mkvmerge --title "Title of the DVD" -o 1.mkv --chapters 1.chapters 1.avi


After I make sure that 1.mkv works, I cleanup:

rm -rf 1.vob 1.avi 1.chapters *.log


That’s it. The .mkv file supports multiple tracks of audio, subtitles and many more.

There could be a better way to do all this, but this worked for me.

ViewSonic PJ503D

We got this projector for Christmas. Around that time ViewSonic had a promotion for the projector + a screen and a mount for around the same price as an average 22″ monitor, which was a pretty good deal.
We are very happy with it. The colors are pretty good with a small negative-like effect on the grays. The picture is slightly rainbow shaped but it is only noticeable if you look for it. You can see pixels only when text is displayed but even then they are not a big deal. For the 70 or so hours of operation so far I’ve seen only one movie with a rainbow effect, barely noticeable, but nobody mentioned anything so I assume it wasn’t a problem. The startup time is acceptable and the overall operation so far is excellent. It is ceiling mounted on one end of the room and throws 80″ picture on the screen for widescreen movies.

Excellent quality and features for the price.

Sunday trip

Last Sunday, Rado, Angel, Dary and I went to the Bulgarian restaurant in Astoria. The drive is a little more than 1 hour, without traffic, and it is pretty easy to go there. We arrived at around 1:30. First we started with appetizers. I ate Tape? Soup. Than our main course was mainly from the grill except the giuyvetche that I got. We had a pretty good time. The place is quiet and it very close to the river to the east of Manhattan. The prices were lower than what we have in the local restaurants, except for the yogurt drink ( $15 for a pitcher of yogurt and water! )!

The main music style was chalga ( which I don’t like ) and, I think, it was a little too loud for an empty restaurant. We left around 4, I think, and we continued at home. We cooked some dinner and we watched American Gangster, which was a good movie.

All in all we spent the day the way we should spend it every week and it was nice!