As part of the mplayer suite of media playing and format conversion tools mencoder enjoys a well deserved reputation. When you need to change a media file from format to another this is the tool to use. It does have a dizzying array of commands and switches that may be called into service so there is a high learning curve. Here is what i do to convert xvid to divx compatible videos and also to create new divx compatible files for my stand alone dvd player.

   My stand alone dvd player has a usb input where an external hard drive connects. On this external hard drive are media files from different sources; backups from dvd movies, mythtv recorded tv shows and even some music. All of the video files use an avi container and they all must be encoded with the proprietary Divx codec or they wont play. I had to convert a lot of stuff to Divx before I sent them over to the stand alone dvd player's external hard drive.

   In linux, after mplayer runs for the first time it leaves a hidden directory called .mplayer in the users home directory. Settings and config files may be placed there. In my case I needed to make sure everything sent to an avi container be Divx compatible so inside the ~/.mplayer directory I created a file called mencoder.conf and placed the following mencoder directive inside.

ffourcc=DX50

   The ffourcc=DX50 option is inserted because an MPEG4 video created without DX50 in its header will not play on stand alone dvd players that require Divx encoding. It works.



   Now on to the nuts and bolts.