Converting MKV to AVI

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 23:21 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 15:33 -0400, sean darcy wrote:
> > Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 12:31 -0400, sean darcy wrote:
> > >> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > >>> On Sat, 2010-05-08 at 10:00 -0400, sean darcy wrote:
> > >>>> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > >>>> [...]> 
> > >>>>> <rant>
> > >>>>> Part of the problem is that all the above tools are clearly aimed at
> > >>>>> people who know what they're doing. Those of us uninterested in a career
> > >>>>> in multimedia technology are liable to be completely lost when
> > >>>>> struggling with any of the (incomplete and ambiguous) manuals, not to
> > >>>>> mention the baroque syntax of the command-line options. Why are there no
> > >>>>> "multimedia conversion for dummies" tools in Linux as there are in
> > >>>>> Windoze?
> > >>>>> </rant>
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Anyway, my question is this: does anyone have a useful recipe for this
> > >>>>> kind of thing?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> And for extra credit: how about converting FLV (Flash video)?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> poc
> > >>>>>
> > >>>> First, I agree with your rant. What the world needs is a media recipe wiki.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> But I'd try again with ffmpeg. It has the most active development and 
> > >>>> user group. The helpful users make up for the lousy docs.
> > >>> Good to know :-)
> > >>>
> > >>>> 1. Do you have a very recent version of ffmpeg? I'd urge you to use svn, 
> > >>>> but at least 0.5.1.
> > >>> It's the standard Fedora repo version:
> > >>> ffmpeg-0.5-5.20091026svn.fc12.x86_64 so possibly not.
> > >>>
> > >> rpmfusion has ffmpeg-0.6-0.3.20100429svn
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>>> 2. ffmpeg -i source.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.avi , should 
> > >>>> work if source mkv is in mpeg-4 and mp3.
> > >>> It's H.264 and AC-3:
> > >>>
> > >>>   Duration: 01:32:04.57, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
> > >>>     Stream #0.0: Video: h264, yuv420p, 1280x720, PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 25 tbr, 1k tbn, 50 tbc
> > >>>     Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, s16
> > >>>
> > >> Well AC-3 should work in your dvd, so try:
> > >>
> > >> ffmpeg -i source.mkv -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec copy output.avi
> > > 
> > > As soon as it starts I get:
> > > [...]
> > > [NULL @ 0x1570030]error, non monotone timestamps 12288 >= 12288
> > > av_interleaved_write_frame(): Error while opening file
> > > 
> > > poc
> > > 
> > > 
> > Ah, the dreaded non montone timestamp. See 
> > https://roundup.ffmpeg.org/issue807
> > 
> > try:
> > ffmpeg -i source.mkv -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec ac3 output.avi
> 
> Trying that now ... it'll take a while.

Well, it didn't work.

One thing I notice is this (on running ffmpeg):

        Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 50.00 (50/1) -> 25.00 (25/1)

I wonder if that could explain the synch problems.

poc