Easy IPhone MP4 converter on Ubuntu
Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:24:10 +0000
Sometimes I would like to watch my favourite movies on my cell phone during a trip (I recommend this movie for beginners). Some phones, however, will not allow you to watch flv directly (video format supported by youtube Flash player). Also you will have problems with directly rendering Xvid/DivX format. A conversion is needed.
I'm using simple script that checks for new files in one directory, converts to suitable format and moves the file to another directory. The process is fully automated and starts on system shutdown (conversion will take some time). Any errors during conversion will be reported by e-mail using local delivery (Postfix, BTW).
#!/bin/sh
SRC=$1
DST=$2
for a in $SRC/*
do
if ! test -f "$a"
then
exit 0
fi
base=`basename "$a"`
out="$DST/$base.mp4"
if test -f "$out"
then
continue
fi
echo "Processing $a -> $out"
if nice ffmpeg -threads 2 -i "$a" -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 250000 \
-r 15 -s 320x200 -acodec libfaac -ar 24000 -ab 64000 -ac 2 "$out" \
2> /tmp/stderr.txt
then
rm "$a"
else
rm "$out"
cat /tmp/stderr.txt | mail $LOGNAME -s "Conversion of $a failed"
fi
done
Additionally you have to install some packages in your OS:
# apt-get install ffmpeg