AVI to Dreambox file conversion

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I finally mastered the art of converting any file to Dreambox, so you can FTP a movie to dreambox and watch it on TV.

I’m using Linux, and using FFMPEG for the conversion.

Here is the general command you need to convert high definition movies to dreambox:


ffmpeg -y -threads 2 -i "$1.avi" -ab 192k -b 2500k  \
-r 25  -maxrate 9000k  -bufsize 1000k -s 720x576\
-vcodec mpeg2video  -s 4cif -acodec  mp2  -map 0:0  -map 0:1  "$1.ts"

This creates quasi-perfect movies.

UPDATE: The above gives errors for some movies. If that happens, try this:

ffmpeg -y -threads 2 -i "$1.avi" -ab 192k -b 2500k \
-r 25 -maxrate 9000k -bufsize 1000k -s 720x576\
-vcodec mpeg2video -s 4cif -acodec mp2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 "$1.ts"

I hope it helps someone!

-turgut

7 thoughts on “AVI to Dreambox file conversion”

  1. Hi there, I\\\’m doing the same as you are doing. Cannot connect to my box at home however, How do you deal with the new transcoded files? They tend to grow with a factor 2.8 to 1.82 depends hoe you transcode: by heart:
    ffmpeg -i $file -target pal-dvd – b 2500k -vsync 2 -qmax 5 -acodec mp2 -ar [copy from $file] -ab [multiply with 2 from $file] $file.transcoded.mpg. Okay i forgot to mention the optimizers which can be found in the ffmpeg documentation (should be visible on your box /usr/shar/doc/ffmpeg/??)
    The only problem with the reambox 500 is that transcoded dvix/xvid tend to grow with a factor raging from 1.82 to 2.5 depends how you dou your transcoding

  2. Thank you. This is very useful information.

    I have a movie in mp4 format (video: h264, yuw420p, 704×336; audio: aac, stereo s16) and a subtitle in srt format. Is it possible using ffmpeg to create a ts file (with subtitle) playable on dreambox (DM600)?

  3. Yes, the transcoded files will grow – that’s normal as we are turning efficient MP4’s into MP2’s that the dreambox’s weak CPU can handle..

  4. About the subtitle, see my other posting on the Linux topic..
    I have a two-step process to put subtitles in..

  7. Hmmm, can\’t see any difference between first command line and second one. What has changed?

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