[mythtv-users] Opening MythTV MPEG4 AVI in Windows?

[Will Dormann]

A friend of mine has a MythTV machine with software MPEG4 encoding.

He found a script to transcode the NUV files into AVIs, and I believe it
uses mencoder from a patched version of mplayer or something like that.

The problem is, he or I can't seem to open the resulting AVI files in any
video editing software.  (such as VirtualDub).    The AVI does seem to play
OK in Windows Media Player using the ffdshow directshow MPEG4 filter.

Programs such as VirtualDub I believe use VfW codecs to open the file (as
opposed to DirectShow filters)?          Anyway, using the DivX 5.05 codec
the AVI shows up all black.   Using XVID, it's close but the picture is
pretty garbled between keyframes.     Also, it seems to complain about the
audio too.  Something about invalid or truncated MP3 audio format - (18
bytes, should be 30).   But Windows Media Player does seem to play it OK.

Is there something wrong with the transcoding script?   Some special MPEG4
codec that needs to be installed for proper playback?

thanks!
-WD