How To Use MEncoder

Install

First, ensure that the mencoder package is installed with all appropriate dependencies with

sudo apt-get install mencoder

You may also consider finding and install the w32codecs package, if you will be working with proprietary formats, such as wmv.

Basic Usage

To use mencoder, you must specify at least an input file, an output file, an audio encoder and a video encoder. As a general framework, you can use the following to convert a video from any type that mplayer can read, to an avi file using mp3 audio encoding.

mencoder -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -o output_movie.avi

Audio/Video encoders

To see a list of audio encoders supported on your installation, run

mencoder -oac help

To use an audio encoder, specify it as in the example above with -oac .

Similarly for video encoders, search with

mencoder -ovc help