SGI: Video

Convert mp4 video files to SGI Format

Does anyone know a simple way to convert a current mp4 video in a format readable by SGI media tools?
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diegel wrote: Does anyone know a simple way to convert a current mp4 video in a format readable by SGI media tools?

Mplayer/mencoder won't do that ?
I never thought that a fat man's face would ever look so sweet ...
hamei wrote: Mplayer/mencoder won't do that ?
Possibly, but I was not able to find a combination of options that work so far.
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diegel wrote: Does anyone know a simple way to convert a current mp4 video in a format readable by SGI media tools?

Did you get anywhere with this ? I tried a few variations on mencoder, seemed like it would eventually work if you found the magic incantation ...
I never thought that a fat man's face would ever look so sweet ...
I wasn't successful with mencoder so far. It should be possible via the mpeg1 format, but that's not the way I like to go. Best would be a Quicktime or AVI format without compression, since mencoder don't support encoding with the legacy compression codecs like Indeo, Cinepak, RLE or RPZA. This could be compressed with dmconvert afterwards.
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Did you have any success with this ? Someone just gave me an mp4 that won't play in Irix. Tried to play it on Windows, not much luck there either.
I never thought that a fat man's face would ever look so sweet ...
diegel wrote: Does anyone know a simple way to convert a current mp4 video in a format readable by SGI media tools?

doing the conversion with irix or for irix?
Can SGI Moviemaker create a short blank clip without former media, or someone share a sample, to examine it with ffmpeg or vlc on a linux box, then hopefully convert mp4 to the same format that Moviemaker will open ?
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silicium wrote: Can SGI Moviemaker create a short blank clip without former media, or someone share a sample, to examine it with ffmpeg or vlc on a linux box, then hopefully convert mp4 to the same format that Moviemaker will open ?


The only thing that has worked so far for me is converting to .mov using MJPEG vcodec (using ffmpeg). The loss in quality has been unacceptable for me so I abandoned this approach for my purposes but it might be ok for you.

I've taken .avi and .mov files that work fine under irix/movieplayer and when I lined up the correct codecs/containers and converted using a recent ffmpeg nothing that should have worked worked (other then mjpeg) . I'm not completely sure what the problem is . The only full-proof way I have been importing videos into my irix box has been converting the mp4 to .tiff/.rgb image files (although it sucks because a 180MB mp4 becomes 12GB worth of images). I have been playing with this for the past few weeks on and off and was going to make a post with my finding - but so far no good findings.

Attached is a list I found in a flame manual that lists the codecs/containers that *should* work (even though the page is for flame it appears to be the same codecs that seem to be supported in base IRIX).



edit:

I just found some ffmpeg notes I was making while I was playing with mp4->IRIX conversion - I guess MPEG-1 also worked in IRIX but i recall it being pretty crappy also. These notes are not research grade info like what Ian usually posts/documents - just some stuff I was playing with and probably drinking a 12-pack while I was at it. 8-)

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#convert to Mjpeg video encoding and ac3 audio encoding, works in IRIX
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -vcodec mjpeg -acodec ac3 Blue_belt.mov

#convert to MPEG-1 (works with discreet, but still shit)
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 Blue_belt.mpeg

#BEST SO FAR
#SGI RGB image format (defaults to pix_fmt = rgb24) 169MB mp4 = 12GB RGB files
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -r 30 -f image2 -vcodec sgi dir/%06d.rgb


I don't recall these below working in IRIX, I never did get around to checking the cinepak codec

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#QuickTime mov with cinepak (slowww!!! fucking aborted this shit, try again later)
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -vcodec cinepak Blue_belt.mov

#JPEG mov (sorta slow) with mp3 audio
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -vcodec libopenjpeg -acodec libmp3lame Blue_belt.mov

#MOV RLE (good results?)
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -vcodec qtrle -acodec libmp3lame  Blue_belt.mov

#uncompressed avi?
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -f rawvideo -vcodec rawvideo  -pix_fmt rgb8 Blue_belt.avi

#uncompressed mov?
>ffmpeg -i Blue_belt.mp4 -f rawvideo -an Blue_belt.mov


The image RGB format was used because from Ian's reporting its the fastest format to use to import into discreet products, Tiff image format worked good aswell, as I'm sure other image formats would work depending on needs.

If someone really needs to I suppose one can convert a mp4 into whatever image format is suitable and then use a tool on IRIX to make it into a movie therefor insuring 100% compatibility (I forget which tool comes standard with IRIX that can do that - moviemaker maybe? There was a post about this somewhere, search/memory is failing me atm - sooo sleeppyy zzZZzZzzZZ)
Here's my workflow for converting a video to an MPEG-1 stream that's playable with the native IRIX media player. I used a Mac with latest ffmpeg and mjpegtools. I'm by no means an expert, this was just a result of many late nights trying several incantations in ffmpeg :lol:

1. Extract the sound:

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ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -vn -c:a mp2 -b:a 224k sound.mp2


2. Extract the video:

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ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -c:v mpeg1video -f mpeg1video -vf scale=320:-1 -b:v 1150k -minrate 1150k -maxrate 1150k video.m1v


3. Combine audio and video streams:

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mplex -r 1411 sound.mp2 video.m1v -o OUTPUT.mpg


Notes:
a. IRIX loves 4:3 video. If you have a 16:9 video, replace step 2 with this to make it 4:3 letterboxed:

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ffmpeg -i INPUT.mp4 -c:v mpeg1video -f mpeg1video -vf scale=320:-1,pad=320:240:0:30 -b:v 1150k -minrate 1150k -maxrate 1150k video.m1v


b. If you get an error from mplex, increase the bitrate (1411 in the example step 3 above) to cover for any overhead.

c. My examples are for creating 320x240 MPEG-1. Adjust accordingly if you want 640x480.
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I use mp4, xvid, bitrate 3612kbs, resolution 672x368, q-scale 0.1.

This is on EMXI (2 TRAMS). I do wonder how much further it can be pushed though.
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For Flame or any other IFFFS suite it would make more sense to create an image sequence instead. It would be much easier and quicker to ingest, too.
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