Simple way to resize a movie file?

Syth

I want to resize a movie file to make it smaller (I know this will lead to a loss in quality). I think transcode/mencoder can do it, but they look too complicated to use. Mostly I see commands a long as this paragraph. Is there some easy way to resize a movie file? Is there a programme that will pick sensible values for resizing? I don't want to learn about video files or codecs. Is there a programme that can be invoked like:

$ resize -s 300M -o smaller_movie.avi movie.avi

steveland?

Does mencode not do something like this?

I remember trying to recompress some small video files to fit on my iPod mini flashed with Linux and reading something about it being used to just resize files

Could be wrong though

lexeme

Syth wrote:

$ resize -s 300M -o smaller_movie.avi movie.avi

RESIZE(1) RESIZE(1)

NAME
resize - set TERMCAP and terminal settings to current xterm window size

i think there are some scripts and UIs for mencoder, transcode ffmpeg or whatever floating around that try to resize based on a filesize parameter.

it's can be tricky to do as it's completely content dependant. if there's lots of moving and flashing colours and so on it's going to be larger than twenty minutes of a guy standing still on stage with only his mouth moving.

i normally use mencoder or transcode.

i don't have access to either man page at the moment, but i normally do something like:

mencoder inputfile.avi -o file.avi -oac mp3lame -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=150 -vf scale -zoom -xy 128

this will keep the aspect ratio, and destroy the filesize with a small bitrate and resolution.

if you wan't want to use the xvid codec you can:

-o outputfile.mpeg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2:vbitrate=150

lavc is builting mplayer audio and video codecs. it supports a few codecs. when you specify -ovc as xvid it uses the same xvid lib you get from those guys. there's **** loads of other options, but they are codec dependant. so you'll specify an -ovc and a -somecodecopts for the options.

play with res and bitrate for that first command above and you should be able to shrink your file.

Edit: chances are, your "original" file has the audio compressed, probably with mp3 already, so instead of "recompressing" it, simply pass -oac copy, does exactly what it says on the tin.