However, k3b expects mpeg2 files for a VCD and most of my movies are avi, mov and other formats.
Constant bit rate MPEG1 for VCD, surely? MPEG2 is SVCD and DVD.
I've tried transcode and mencoder, I've tried MainActor (from 8.2 DVD) and LiVES, to no avail. Is there a simple way to convert an input video file into a format suitable for burning onto a VCD?
Simple answer: no. Converting video formats is horribly complicated. There's so many input variables and so many types of output which might be required for various purposes that the whole process can't be pinning down easily. Getting output which your DVD player will accept and play with the right aspect ratio at the right quality is a problem which you have to solve differently each time you do it (or at least until you find a source file with exactly the same parameters as one you've seen before). I use mplayer and mjpegtools myself. The gist is to play to a FIFO called (by default) stream.yuv with something like: mplayer -vo yuv4mpeg -ao null file.avi and then in another shell: cat stream.yuv | mpeg2enc -f1 -o file.m1v Then use mplayer to pull out the audio, toolame to encode it to MP2 format, then mplex to multiplex the m1v and mp2 tracks together. After an awful lot of pratting about with widescreen/letterboxing and other, seemingly endless details, you might be happy with the job. --
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