I received several promo videos in the form of .mov containers which I don’t tend to use, it was clear I had to change the container to .mp4 which is what I actually use. After using Mencoder to make the changes I noticed some severe loss of quality in the video. After digging around on Google I found the following combination that gave the best quality. Results may vary.
mencoder filename.mov -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts fixed_quant=4 -o output.mp4
Basically Mencoder was told to obtain the best quaility with fixed_quant=4. The quaility level ranges from 1-31. Remember because we changed the container and then told it to keep the highest quality avaiable the file will result in a larger output. Example :
It should not be that hard to make changes the line above to fit your needs. Sources : http://en.linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_Convert_video_files http://www.linux.com/feature/121385 http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-selecting-codec.html
mencoder — Jan 1, 2009