Maintain aspect ratio when converting video? - ffmpeg

Question

Hi folks,

I'm trying to convert movies from .avi to an iphone readable format wherever I look, people suggest the following options for ffmpeg

ffmpeg -s 320x240 -aspect 320:240 [...]

This does not bode well for videos with a different aspect ratio!

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How can I keep the aspect ratio from changing? Is there a way to set the size dynamically?

e.g. have the height to be 240 and the width variable?

Answer 1

Use a simple script in whatever language and get the video details, and adjust accordingly for a target size, you can also "letter box" or pad the top and bottoms for a better aspect ratio.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=702188 http://stream0.org/2008/01/find-and-extract-video-file-de.html http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Ipod_export