Bonum Certa Men Certa

Turning a Podcast Into Video Using Mencoder

Summary: A note and a tip about going from audio to video with Free/libre software

TECHBYTES, our audiocast as we call it, currently comes in two methods of delivery. One is purely audio and another is video plus audio. But YouTube is a large platform and many shows put their material in there. Turning 50 shows into video can be a tedious task with a graphical user interface, whereas with command line tools this process can be automated. After some exploration we found a way to turn audio into a slideshow and then split the files for uploading the resultant Ogg files (given the known upload limits). To encode using a command line utility or set thereof, the following chain of commands gets issued:



mencoder -ss 00:00:00 -endpos 00:10:10 mf://*.jpg -audiofile ~/TechBytes/48/techbytes0048.ogg -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -fps 0.1 -o 48p1.ogg

mencoder -ss 00:10:00 -endpos 00:20:10 mf://*.jpg -audiofile ~/TechBytes/48/techbytes0048.ogg -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -fps 0.1 -o 48p2.ogg

[...]

where -ss 00:00:00 means it starts at 0 seconds, -endpos 00:10:10 defines an endpoint using the same type of time format, mf://*.jpg takes all the images in the current directory -- images that are generated by duplication except for the first one. Files can be easily replicated (e.g. to serve as dummy sequence) with:

for file in *.jpg
  do
    `nice cp ${file} ${file}-dupe.jpg`
  done


The remainder of the arguments specify the -audiofile, encoders, frames per seconds (fps), and an output file at the very end. To split videos into smaller chunks, we have tried many different tools but eventually used mencoder to simplify the pipeline (thanks to all those who helped in IRC). This whole command basically turns a simple sound file into smaller ogg files that also contain images with transitions between them. Since it is scriptable, we can now apply this to all past episodes. YouTube is moving to WebM quite soon and in any case, making it a mere option using Ogg format and free software utilities simply broadens our reach.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 29/12/2025: Earlier "Happy New Year 2026" and "Dead Archivist Society"
Links for the day
Links 29/12/2025: Putin Critic Sergei Udaltsov Imprisoned, Cloudflare’s Outages Discussed
Links for the day
LLMs Are Inherently Parasitic, We Need to Treat Them Accordingly
a maintenance burden for those who possess actual intelligence
Links 29/12/2025: Bottled Water Considered Harmful, Cheetos Promoting Nazis in Europe
Links for the day
EPO People Power - Part XVIII - European Patent Office "Paints Itself as Progressive While Literally Being Represented by Cokeheads"
To what length/s will German authorities and media (not just in Germany) go to protect the EPO's "precious image"?
What IBM Will Do to Red Hat in the Coming Year or Years
This won't end up well for GNU/Linux as a whole
Not Turning in His Grave: When People Die, Their Corporate Destruction Becomes a "Turnaround"
All he did was mass layoffs - a tradition that has not ended since then
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 28, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 28, 2025
Louis Gerstner Has Died, His Legacy of Mass Layoffs at IBM Hasn't
Hagiographies will follow. They will say he "saved" IBM.
Links 29/12/2025: The Sunday Routine, Limits of Memory, and Gemini Vocabulary
Links for the day
Doxing is Illegal in the UK (Even If You're Based in the US)
Somebody has just added my identity (name, mugshot etc.) to a "hitlist" site of a political nature, pandering to violent people
Misunderstood Weapons of Censorship
It's cruel world out there. One needs to be aware of these shady activities, including "censorship-as-a-service".
Google Confidently Wrong, Nowadays Defaming People Too
I can relate as people did this to me and to my wife
What Happens When Americans Are Out of Office (Away From Work) for a Week? Vista 11 "Share" Falls to Just 10%.
How's that for slow adoption?
2026 Will Have EPO Focus, People Will See What the EPO is Trying to Hide
We certainly hope people will be held accountable
EPO People Power - Part XVII - Drugged, Stoned, and Drunk at the Office During Working Hours (Campinos Friend and Propaganda Chief Has Long Done This)
It's a total disgrace that press all over Europe is still trying to cover this up!
Gemini Links 28/12/2025: Health Ordeals and Discontinued Pedals
Links for the day
Slop About "Linux" Came Only From One Slopfarm This Weekend
Another day has passed with no LLM slop found in our RSS feeds
Links 28/12/2025: 'Digital Detox' and Slop "Backlash Grew Massively in 2025"
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2025: "Mass Quitting Apple" and "Generative AI Industry is Fraudulent, Immoral and Dangerous"
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2025: Fascination, Holidays, and Mormonism
Links for the day
Microsoft's Weapon Against the Reality of XBox (the Console) Dying Seems to be LLM Slop
XBox is dead/dying
Raffles for the Immaterial: Unauthorised Bingo for Red Hat "Vouchers"
This is IBM and some slop images
Andy Farnell on Standing Up Against Technological Oppression
some portions from it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 27, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, December 27, 2025
Once Again, GAFAM Deletes All Your Data, Only Corrects This After Millions of People Lead an Uproar Online ("Richard Stallman Warned Us About This")
No lessons learned, eh?
Linus Torvalds Blasts Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) for Attempting to 'Protect' Linux
Like it 'protects' women
New Record for GNU/Linux in Australia (at Microsoft's Expense)
Windows is at an all-time low, GNU/Linux... all-time high
Fighting Over Whose Pockets Are Deeper (or Who Borrows More Money)
When processes favour those who are more wealthy (or more willing to go into infinite debt or steal money of other people) those processes match the attributes of lawfare rather than law
You Know Your Critics Are Jealous and Have Inferiority Complex When...
One day we'll write about all this in great depth
Starting a Book With a Flawed Premise or Weak Hypothesis
To me, Schneier is a sort of "RMS of sec"
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs (30,000+ in 2025) Not About "AI", Just Business Failure
"AI" is replacing... the old excuses for mass layoffs
"But Corruption is Everywhere"
"We'll always have Polio..."
EPO People Power - Part XVI - Berenguer Does Not Speak German, So What Did He Tell German Police That Busted Him?
based in Germany and does not speak the language
Challenges for EPO Insiders to Try to Tackle in 2026
Nothing will get solved as long as the circus that runs this show tries to keep the circus going
Days Without Slop About "Linux"
It's time to move on
Links 27/12/2025: Canada Post Strike Called Off, Debate About Europeans "Working Over Christmas"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: Household Appliances and Flight Fright
Links for the day
Links 27/12/2025: US Cracking Down on Whistleblowers, Expanding Bombardment Campaigns Worldwide
Links for the day
Resuming EPO Coverage Today, Can António Campinos 'Survive' Cocainegate?
We said we'd continue in the weekend
Links 27/12/2025: More Attacks on Media (Meduza Co-founder Sentenced to Prison in Absentia), "What Owning Music Means To Me"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: geminiprotocol.net Downtime and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 26, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, December 26, 2025