Ubuntu Unleashed

Found a little script that will convert videos to IPod video format (i.e. mp4 with xvid and aac encoding) utilising ffmpeg and ruby. The nice thing about this is that it will preserve the original aspect ratio and add black bars depending, so videos look like they should do (well aside from being in QVGA 320x240 resolution!). Some smartphones (such as the Nokia N95) are also able to display this format =)

The script can be found here

For a little HOWTO:

Open up synaptic and ensure that you have ffmpeg and ruby installed/
apt-get install ruby ffmpeg liblame-dev libxvidcore4-dev libx264-dev libfaac-dev libfaad2-dev
sudo apt-get build-dep ffmpeg
Download the script:

Make it so you can run it:

Move it so it's system-wide:

Now, if you want to convert a video, just open up a terminal and type mp4ize [videoname] and it will make an IPod mp4 version in the same folder. Enterprising Nautilus Actions users may want to add a right click menu version for this by adding /usr/local/bin/mp4ize as a path and %M as a parameter.

If everything goes well, your output will look like this:
root@ion:/extra/movies/Life.Support.DVDRip.XviD-BeStDivX/Sample# ls
bestdivx-lifes-sample.avi
root@ion:/extra/movies/Life.Support.DVDRip.XviD-BeStDivX/Sample# mp4ize bestdivx-lifes-sample.avi
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=${prefix}/lib --shlibdir=${prefix}/lib --incdir=${prefix}/include/ffmpeg --enable-shared --enable-mp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-faad --mandir=${prefix}/share/man --enable-vorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-faac --enable-xvid --enable-dts --enable-amr_nb --enable-amr_wb --enable-pp --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-x264 --enable-a52 --extra-cflags=-Wall -g -fPIC -DPIC
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.11.0
libavformat version: 50.5.0
built on Nov 3 2006 21:14:27, gcc: 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-13)
Input #0, avi, from 'bestdivx-lifes-sample.avi':
Duration: 00:01:00.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1071 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 576x320, 23.98 fps(r)
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 160 kb/s
Must supply at least one output file
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=${prefix}/lib --shlibdir=${prefix}/lib --incdir=${prefix}/include/ffmpeg --enable-shared --enable-mp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-faad --mandir=${prefix}/share/man --enable-vorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-faac --enable-xvid --enable-dts --enable-amr_nb --enable-amr_wb --enable-pp --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-x264 --enable-a52 --extra-cflags=-Wall -g -fPIC -DPIC
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.11.0
libavformat version: 50.5.0
built on Nov 3 2006 21:14:27, gcc: 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-13)
Input #0, avi, from 'bestdivx-lifes-sample.avi':
Duration: 00:01:00.0, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1071 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 576x320, 23.98 fps(r)
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, 160 kb/s
Output #0, mp4, to 'bestdivx-lifes-sample.mp4':
Stream #0.0: Video: xvid, yuv420p, 320x240, q=3-5, 400 kb/s, 23.98 fps(c)
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
frame= 1439 q=3.0 Lsize= 3734kB time=59.9 bitrate= 510.6kbits/s
video:2763kB audio:936kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.928542%
root@ion:/extra/movies/Life.Support.DVDRip.XviD-BeStDivX/Sample# ls
bestdivx-lifes-sample.avi bestdivx-lifes-sample.mp4
root@ion:/extra/movies/Life.Support.DVDRip.XviD-BeStDivX/Sample#