Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

why is ffmpegx so crappy?

H

Hibbity

macrumors member
Original poster
I have a bunch of .rm files that i've been trying to convert to avi's...the only program i've found that even says it will do it is ffmpegx, but its so terrible! nearly every time, i'll start the convert going and it instantly says "finished," shows the finished file in the target location, but the file has no data. Does anyone know why it does this, how i can fix it, or possibly a better app?
Thanks
 
Hibbity said:
I have a bunch of .rm files that i've been trying to convert to avi's...the only program i've found that even says it will do it is ffmpegx, but its so terrible! nearly every time, i'll start the convert going and it instantly says "finished," shows the finished file in the target location, but the file has no data. Does anyone know why it does this, how i can fix it, or possibly a better app?
Thanks
Click to expand...

You need to install the Real codec and use a very specific Mpeg-4 encoder, Mencoder I think it is, it's listed in the encoder options. Should give an mpeg-4 format in the .avi container.

Never been too happy with the results though, the sound goes funny. There really isn't a program around that will do it properly.
 
ffmpegX is an Aqua frontend to a bunch of little command line utilities that all have to work together to produce a result. It's not really ffmpegX's fault, it's the fault of the authors of the various audio/video utilities for making monolithic command-line programs instead of putting the functionality in libraries or plugins so that it can be easily accessed by GUI programs. A lot of this is Unix/Linux stuff programmed by Unix/Linux developers who are not really thinking/caring "how can I do this in an object-oriented way"... and everyone who cannot / is not willing to master long bizarre commands is worse off for it.
 
Super Macho Man said:
ffmpegX is an Aqua frontend to a bunch of little command line utilities that all have to work together to produce a result. It's not really ffmpegX's fault, it's the fault of the authors of the various audio/video utilities for making monolithic command-line programs instead of putting the functionality in libraries or plugins so that it can be easily accessed by GUI programs. A lot of this is Unix/Linux stuff programmed by Unix/Linux developers who are not really thinking/caring "how can I do this in an object-oriented way"... and everyone who cannot / is not willing to master long bizarre commands is worse off for it.
Click to expand...
The source code for the command line tools are all available. Ffmpeg is also available as a library (Google libffmpeg), so it's not the tool's author's fault at all. It's simpler for the author of ffmpegx to just call the command line tools than to figure out how to interface the different libraries.

And of course practically everything in Linux/UNIX is available in libraries, it's just that end-users never use libraries directly. Not all libraries in Linux/UNIX are of course OO as a large number of them are written in C, however, that doesn't make them less useful.
 
i was under the impression that it only support RM in audio format, i was never able to convert a video rm to avi. but I could be wrong, and there is nothing for MAC that could convert rmvb o avi...
 
isn't handbrake just ffmpegx with a flashy GUI? I find it does a very good job at ripping DVDs (not that i do it... shh...)
 
Scarlet Fever said:
isn't handbrake just ffmpegx with a flashy GUI? I find it does a very good job at ripping DVDs (not that i do it... shh...)
Click to expand...
no
handbrake can only handle DVD files, it can't convert between MPG, AVI etc...
 
I didn't like FFMpegX. It would always say complete, but then leave me with a blank empty file...
 
I couldn't get ffmpegx to work either, and use the mencoder that the install references instead. As an example, for rmvb files:

mencoder my_file.rmvb -o my_file.avi -ovc lavc -ffourcc DX50 -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp3:abitrate=128 -fps 24

will convert to lavc MPEG-4 video & MP3 audio. Lavc is speedy for encoding. I choose the fps value by running input through real media player then looking at "Clip Info" window, streams tab - current stable fps while playing is better than the declared fps maybe. I used an override on the fourcc code, as quicktime was complaining about the default code that lavc was using.

Edit - to be clear, ffmpegx wasn't working for me, but mencoder works fine, giving you all you need to get media converted over & playable in Quicktime/Frontrow & whatever else you fancy
 
Super Macho Man said:
ffmpegX is an Aqua frontend to a bunch of little command line utilities that all have to work together to produce a result. It's not really ffmpegX's fault, it's the fault of the authors of the various audio/video utilities for making monolithic command-line programs instead of putting the functionality in libraries or plugins so that it can be easily accessed by GUI programs. A lot of this is Unix/Linux stuff programmed by Unix/Linux developers who are not really thinking/caring "how can I do this in an object-oriented way"... and everyone who cannot / is not willing to master long bizarre commands is worse off for it.
Click to expand...

Congratulations on using object oriented in a sentence, you get one buzzword point. I take it you don't do much programming. Wrapping a GUI to an existing command line program such as ffmpeg can be incredibly powerful and simple and can have all the options of the command line utility if the GUI is done correctly. ffmpeg itself even uses *shockingly!* libraries, allowing developers of GUI programs having to only worry about ffmpeg. Actually the problem here lie in one of your "magic object oriented" libraries that solve all problems, specifically the Real media decoder that can be redistributed.
 
I never had an issue with ffmpegx once I learned how to use it properly. If you are getting blank files, some of your settings are probably wrong or you are missing something.
 
FFMPEGX rocks for me....


I don't do a lot with it, but everything I've done has worked great...

With the exception of .OGM video files......(unsupported.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back