# My dvd player is very picky how to convert to playable transcode/ffmpeg



## Alain De Vos (Sep 24, 2022)

My dvd player does not know many video formats.
Which command-line to use with ffmpeg or transcode to convert to something most video players know ?


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## Alain De Vos (Sep 24, 2022)

I already have something, but maybe there is better,

```
ffmpeg -i input.file -c:v mpeg4 -q:v 1 -tag:v divx -s 720x576 -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 1 -ac 2 -ar 44100 -r 25 output.avi
```


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## jmos (Sep 25, 2022)

…what about using multimedia/handbrake for this task? Once found your settings you can feed it with different input formats as well as a DVD device, and you'll get a playable output file (I'm using HandBrake to prepare everything for my small home server with minidlna on it).

Edit: Haven't used it for years, but to convert video files by command line I've used mencoder instead of ffmpeg; I had a script that identified "bad" files direct from the minidlna database (my player disliked files with "%MULT5%" in the column "DLNA_PN"), and converted it with the options "-ovc xvid -xvidencopts fixed_quant=4 -vf harddup -oac pcm".


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## diizzy (Sep 25, 2022)

Stick to the DVD specification?
ffmpeg -hide_banner -h full | grep target | grep type





						What does FFmpeg's '-target pal-dvd' actually do, and how can we modify it to fit output onto a single-layer DVD?
					

This isn't really a programming task, but more something that's bugged me so I decided to do some digging for an answer. FFmpeg has a command-line parameter -target, which allows you to specifically...




					todayiwantedtoprogram.tumblr.com
				



Audio needs to be PCM or MPEG-2 Audio (audio/twolame) and you need to "author" a disc to make it playable.


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## Alain De Vos (Sep 25, 2022)

What is weird is that my "older" philips DVD player plays more formats then my "newer".


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## Alexander88207 (Sep 25, 2022)

As far as I know it seems to have been a problem of codec licenses?  At that time i got a player from china that could play everything.


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## diizzy (Sep 25, 2022)

MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are the only officially supported video codecs for a "DVD-player", anything else is at the discretion of the manufacturer and costs around it.


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