MPlayer with mencoder support must be present on your system.
You need automake >= 1.6
and of course KDE >= 3
KMediagrab is a media grabber and encoder built on top of mplayer/mencoder.
It can grab and encode a dvd at the same time ( creating a divx or a videocd file for instance), record a
movie or your favourite tv program from your tv-card or translate a video file from one format to another ( create a realplayer file
from a .wmv one for instance ).
This front-end is intended for the middle-experienced user who knows at least what is a codec and its bitrate...
In DVD mode you can choose your language if exists on your dvd-media and the title to grab ( No.1 is the default ).
In TV mode you can choose the program number ( it's up to you to know which tv station is associated with) and the
recording time in minutes ( starting time is not yet supported ).
Of course grabbing and encoding at the same time from your tv card is quite cpu-expensive ; be sure to have a powerful processor
otherwise choose a little format .
I have a 450mhz Pentium 3 grabbing 384*288 frames at 300KBps using divx4 and audio mp3 at 48KBps SIGH!
For DVD and file transcode it's just a matter of time consuming.
You can also follow what's happening watching down at the output text scrolling ; if something goes wrong it's up to your knowledge of mplayer to understand what's wrong ; anyway be careful to choose the right title if encoding a dvd ,choose an existing tv station from the correct driver if encoding from tv and choose an existing and valid media file when transcoding a file( the index option is intended to repair broken .avi files).
A good feature is the play button which allows you to immediately watch what you're doing even while encoding , USE IT it can save you a lot of time.
I hope you'll enjoy and find this useful for your needs.
Comments thanks and suggestions are welcome and appreciated at:
francesco.mezzanotte@inwind.it
Ciao
Francesco Mezzanotte
P.S.
Download and install xvid encoder from www.xvid.org follow instructions on mplayer site I switched from divx4/5 to xvid because its speed and better quality.
Thx a lot to the mplayer team which made such a wonderful tool .Nothing else better !!