Some are Boojums--

I recently needed to take a raw mpeg-2 file that I obtained from my pvr-250 capture card (pulling from a VHS-C camcorder), and convert it to something that would fit on youtube. Here's the magic mencoder incantations that I used:

$ mencoder 20051204.mpg -edl poker.edl -ovc frameno -oac mp3lame \
> -lameopts vbr=3 -o frameno.avi
$ mencoder 20051204.mpg -edl poker.edl -oac copy -ovc lavc  -lavcopts \
> vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1:vbitrate=863:vhq -o output.avi -vf scale=320:240
$ mencoder 20051204.mpg -edl poker.edl -oac copy -ovc lavc  -lavcopts \
> vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=2:vbitrate=863:vhq -o output.avi -vf scale=320:240

Using "edl" to cut out the stuff I didn't want was really nice. No need to get avidemux to compile!