Real media to Xvid (divx) and cropping with Ubuntu

If you liked my last post on how to save real player streams and convert them to mpeg 4 avi files, then you might find this post useful.

Today I needed to save a real player stream of last night’s 10 o’clock news from the BBC and then convert it into an xvid file. I also wanted to crop it down to just show the particular news item we were interested in (a feature about one of our sites). This is how I did it:

1. First follow the steps on how to install mencoder and then dump the ram stream as per my previous post.
2. Next convert the dump file to xvid with the following command:
   
mencoder stream.dump -o bbc-10oclocknews.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=128 -oac mp3lame


3. Now use Avidemux to crop the video file. If you haven’t already got this program you can install with
   
sudo apt-get install avidemux


4. Open the video file with Avidemux, and then ensure the video and audio are in sync by selecting Audio > Build VBR timemap from the menu.
5. Use the selection Markers to chop out bits you don’t want (or select the bit you do want), and then save the resulting video with File > Save > Save Video
   And that’s it! Here is the resulting file: