SIVE beta 2 README

Summary

1.Overview
2.Features
3.Installation
4.Where can I find mp4creator ?
5.Website

1.Overview

SIVE - Simple iPod Video Converter - is a GTK2 frontend to mplayer, mencoder and mp4 muxers. Its usefulness is pretty clear : it makes converting videos for playing on iPod Video real simple, allowing to select audio tracks and subtitles tracks. No need for end users to browse manpages and documentation to learn how to convert their videos to read them on iPod, which might make them think "geez, it's so easy under MacOS and Windows and so difficult in Linux/Unix". This simple GUI does the job.

SIVE produces H.124 videos, by using mencoder to encode and mp4creator or MP4Box to create a container iPod Video can use. It generates the options to be passed to these command line tools in order to create what the user asked (bitrate, audio track, subtitles, resolution, scale, crop). It shows the commands and their results in an embedded terminal so the user can learn how to use these tools manually. It does not do any conversion itself : this tricky job is left to the tools which are known for doing it well.

2.Features

At the moment, SIVE supports :
- input formats :

> MKV
> AVI
> ASF/WMV
> MPG
> VOB (but no audio and subtitles tracks selection yet) - direct DVD conversion
- output format : H.124, with all the special settings iPod Video requires - subtitles formats :

> embedded in input file (MKV)
> .sub file
> .srt file
> (other formats will be added soon) - mp4muxers :

> MP4Box
> mp4creator
- audio track selection (MKV)
- batch conversion
- desktop integration
- Translations :

> English
> French
> Swedish
> Chinese coming soon
> Other languages coming

3.Installation

The installation process is straightfoward and classic. The classic "./configure && make && sudo make install" will do it.

Requirements :

Compilation (i.e. headers files required) :
- libgnome-2.0 >= 2.14
- libgnomeui-2.0 >= 2.14
- libglade-2.0 >= 2.6.0
- gtk+-2.0
- vte
- glib-2.0
  - libnotify
Execution (i.e. binary packages are enough) :
- mplayer/mencoder < 1.0 (with x264 and faac support)
  - MP4Box
    - or -
- mp4creator (see "where can I find mp4creator ?")

4.Where can I find mp4creator ?

Although mp4creator is not necesserary anymore since SIVE can use MP4Box, you might want to use it.

mp4creator is part of the mpeg4ip package. If you're distro does not provide a pre-compiled package for it (for instance if you're running Ubuntu), you'll need to download the sources (1) and compile it.

Ubuntuforums.org has a guide for that (2). Surprisingly, when compiling on Ubuntu 6.10, I don't have to follow it at all. Instead, I just have to untar it and run :

        ./bootstrap --disable-mp4live
        make
        sudo make install

(1) http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=18676 (2) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=114946

5.Website

For support, feature requests, bug reports, news, and discussions, visit :

http://sive.sourceforge.net

--
(c) 2007 Clement Lorteau <northern_lights@users.sourceforge.net>