How to convert movies to mp4 using avidemux2

I recently bought a Sony Ericsson K770 mobile, which is a pretty neat piece of phone.

The phone supports playback of videos in different formats, including .mp4 or .3gp. As I would like to be able to convert videos from different sources to .mp4 using Ubuntu, I found a nice and easy method to convert dozens of Source formats to mp4.

All you need is a decent version of avidemux2, which can be installed in Ubuntu using the following command:

(or your preferred apt gui)

sudo apt-get install avidemux

First look at avidemux:

Let’s convert a downloaded flash video from youtube to the format .mp4. This entry describes how to enable Firefox to download flash videos from youtube.

Open your source video in avidemux, in my case, the file is called 777_takeoff.flv.

On the left, you have 3 types of segments, video audio and Format to set.

For “video” use the following settings:

Next part is a bit tricky as it offers a wide range of settings. I haven’t played a lot with them, but finally I can say, these settings should work, in opposite to the originally set ones for xvid4. Only thing that might interest you is the bitrate the video will be encoded to.

I have set mine to 400 kb/s – but far less, like 200-250 kb/s should be plenty, depending on the original video which you want to convert.

For Filter, you have to add a video resizer filter to get the desired resolution so that your mobile is able to play it. In case of my K770i and many other mobile phones, the resolution is 320×240 Pixel, called QVGA (a quarter of VGA resolution). Other typical resolution would be 176×220 for instance for the Sony Ericsson K530i.

So hit Filter, chose a resizer (for instance Mplayer resize) and hit the green “+” at the bottom of the selection list. A small window will popup to select the desired resolution, in my case, as mentioned, 320×240.

Next thing is the audio Section. Select “FAAC” Codec for the Audio.

hit “Configure” and select for instance 96kb/s, which is more than plenty enough for the audio quality.

Finally, you have to set the format, a container, which the file will reside in, in our case, mp4.

Finally, just hit “File->Save->Save Video” and give the file your chosen name, using the ending .mp4. Avidemux will start converting now and will result in a converted video of 320×240, with MPEG4 video and FAAC audio codec, which should work pretty well in your Sony Ericsson K770i, after you have uploaded it to your mobile phone, which is another story 😉

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