From Devin's WIKI

Random video notes:

Convert frame rate with -r:

devin@studio:~/Video$ ffmpeg -i thursday1.avi -r 25 thursday1.mpg

Convert directories of jpegs into avi file:

mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=10 -o test.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vbitrate=800

Best avi to mpg results:

mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc claymation.avi  -o claymation.mpg

Grab output of mplayer with recordmydesktop:

# start mplayer
mplayer -loop 0 -vo aa:bold 2010-06-24-210644.ogv

# get window id
xwininfo

# record with captured id
recordmydesktop --windowid 0x3c00002

Final dv to mpeg 4:

mencoder video.dv -mf fps=25 -o video.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -oac mp3lame

Extract bitmaps from video

First, attempting to 8-bitify images by shrinking and losing resolution and reducing frame rate to drop most frames:

ffmpeg -i intel.avi -r 4 -s 24x24 intel8bit.avi

Extract bitmap images:

ffmpeg -i intel8bit.avi -f image2 foo_%5d.bmp

Note that I then took each image into Gimp and used Desaturate to convert to grayscale, then Levels to reduce image to pure Black or White.