Re: [gentoo-user] convert wmv to mp4?

[Helmut Jarausch]

On 05/02/2012 02:51:07 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com>
> wrote:
> >> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Paul Hartman
> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Mark Knecht
> <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Paul Hartman
> >>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:
> >>>>> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Paul Hartman
> >>>>>> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Neil Bothwick
> <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Tue, 1 May 2012 12:30:11 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Notice the (-win32codecs) flag. Seems to me (on this system
> anyway)
> >>>>>>>>> they are hard masked off? I tried adding the flag to
> package.use but
> >>>>>>>>> emerge won't enable the darn thing...
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> You need to unmask the USE flag first, by adding -win32codecs
> >>>>>>>> to /etc/portage/profile/use.mask
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> If he is using amd64 he can't use win32codecs unless he uses
> a 32-bit
> >>>>>>> mplayer/ffmpeg. AFAIK.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Wouldn't using multilib work around this?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think he would still need to compile a 32-bit mplayer/ffmpeg
> (in a
> >>>>> 32-bit chroot) to be able to make use of them. Multilib would
> let him
> >>>>> run 32-bit mplayer or ffmpeg binaries (which themselves would
> be able
> >>>>> to use the 32-bit DLLs). But I don't think 64-bit
> mplayer/ffmpeg can
> >>>>> call 32-bit DLLs.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> There is an amd64codecs package containing the 64-bit codecs,
> but it
> >>>>> has been masked and made obsolete by the fact that
> mplayer/ffmpeg can
> >>>>> natively do most (or all?) of those codecs these days.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> And presumably for all the same reasons, if I cannot play them I
> >>>> cannot convert them.
> >>>>
> >>>> Ah, a world full of unspecified, proprietary vendor specific file
> >>>> formats hidden in old dlls... Ain't it a fine world we live in?
> >>>>
> >>>> Sort of painful to start maintaining a 32-bit chroot just to
> handle
> >>>> this sort of thing. I suspect there's some freeware for the
> Windows
> >>>> world that might allow me to do the conversion in a VM. I'll
> start
> >>>> looking for that. The web site that advertised conversion didn't
> work
> >>>> as it bombed out after an hour.
> >>>
> >>> There used to be a 32-bit mplayer-bin package in portage that
> would
> >>> have made it simple, but that disappeared some time ago.
> >>>
> >>>> Maybe there's some simple binary install I could do - Fedora or
> >>>> Ubuntu, etc. - but my concern there is that those binaries might
> not
> >>>> play well inside my 64-bit Gentoo environ...
> >>>
> >>> If you can find a statically-linked 32-bit mplayer somewhere, and
> >>> emerge the win32codecs package on your machine, I think it has a
> >>> chance of working.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Actually, going back to the title of the thread, I don't need to
> watch
> >> wmv files in 64-bit. I really only need to _convert_ them to mp4 so
> >> that I could watch them using xine, etc. or externa
> lly on the Kindle.
> >>
> >> Maybe a 32-bit Gentoo chroot that doesn't maintain any desktop or
> X11,
> >> etc. could work? If I could convert the files at the command line
> >> using ffmpeg in 32-bit then that would be pretty manageable in
> terms
> >> of Gentoo work, assuming the ffmpeg package can be built as without
> >> any GUI stuff?
> >
> > I was just thinking that. I played with a chroot briefly just before
> > inara and kaylee bit it, and it seemed pretty trivial. Were it me,
> > that'd be the next thing I'd try. (But then, compiling is cheap for
> > me)
> >
>
> I think I'll try it in a Virtualbox VM first I instead of a chroot.
> That's pretty easy to deal with. Easy to back up. Easy to move to a
> different system down the road. No disk partitions, etc.
>
> Biggest issue for me is likely to be that I haven't done a 32-bit
> install in at least 6 years. No idea what to watch out for but I doubt
> it's any big deal. No idea how the 32-bit VM really does 32-bit when
> it's running on a 64-bit processor that's doing 64-bit all the time
> but I guess that's why we pay these Intel & Oracle people the big
> bucks, right? ;-)
>
> And if I end up needing X in the 32-bit environment for some reason it
> will be easy to add that down the road.
>
> It's a real drag about the hassles your machines have been going
> through. I hope you get by that soon.
>

I'd use a SystemRescueCD image (it's an up-to-date Gentoo 32 bit system)
Helmut.