The mjpeg programs are a set of tools that can do recording of videos and playback, simple cut-and-paste editing and the MPEG compression of audio and video under Linux.

Recording is supported for the Zoran based cards like the Buz (Iomega), DC10 (MIRO, Pinnacle), Matrox Marvel cards and the LML33 (Linux Media Labs). See related pages to the right to find the right driver for your card.
The recorded videos can be converted to MPEG streams. The software playback of MPEG streams works with almost every player and every OS.
You can produce special forms of MPEG streams like VCD (Video CD) and SVCD for hardware playback.

A key design objective of the tools is interoperability with other video tools:
The tools can be used used to edit, playback and compress motion JPEG (MJPEG) AVI's captured using the xawtv package.

The tools can be used to edit playback and compress MJPEG streams created and editted with broadcast 2000. N.b. the current mpeg2movie high bit-rate MPEG encoder is in large part derived from an obsolescent snapshot of the mjpegtools MPEG encoder.

Transcoding of MPEG-2 streams to MPEG-2/MPEG-1 is supported through patches to the output drivers for mpeg2dec and ac3dec tools from the Linux Video and DVD Project (broken link: http://linuxvideo.org).

dv2jpg converts a DV codec-encoded AVI stream (from dvgrab, for example) to an mjpeg-encoded AVI stream that can be processed by the mjpeg tools package. The mjpeg AVI can be converted to mpeg video/audio and burned onto a VCD later.
Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dv2jpg/

Videos created with Nupplevideo from bttv based cards can also be encoded with the tools. More info at: Roman's NuppelVideo Homepage.

MPEG output is compatible with Microsoft Media player and Real player.

The MJPEG-Howto, written by Bernhard Praschinger contains a brief introduction to all the MJPEG-tools. If you don't know where to start, please start by reading this document, it gives an overview of about everything the tools can do.

• (Jan. 6th, 2008 - by Bernhard)

  The RC3 of the mjpeg tools has be released some time ago. There is a problem with the rate controll in mpeg2enc, that delayes the release.
  Some more exiting news is that Hannes Domani has compiled many parts of the mjpegtools for the Windows OS. You can use the package on your windows. It is compiled using mingw. You find the windows package in the download area. The Zip file contains the compiled sources, the sources, and the patches you need to apply to compile it. Things that do not work is lavrec, and the audio output in lavplay.

• (Sept. 5th, 2007 - by Bernhard)

  David McNab has written some bindings for the yuv4mpeg API, supporting both Python and C++. Based on SWIG, implements virtually the whole API as given in yuv4mpeg.h, and also implements a high-level 'Stream' class in both C and Python. So when you are interrested you get the package here: http://www.freenet.org.nz/pyyuv4mpeg/

• (Feb 4th, 2007 - by Bernhard)

  We have just released a release candidate 1 for version 1.9.0. Downloads are available from our Project page. Please give it a shot and report bugs to the mailinglist.

• (Nov 16th, 2006 - by Bernhard)

  The jpeg-mmx is declared dead.
  There are several causes. The most important is the minimal speed gain you have with machinges running faster than 1GHz. The other thing is that it speed up things only on 32bit Intel and AMD machines. The last thing is that we have no maintaner for the jpeg-mmx, and it cause problems with other packages (libquicktime for example) So we have removed the jpeg-mmx from the list of downloadable software.

• (June 5th, 2006 - by Bernhard)

  Dik Takken has written a MPEG2 encoding gui for the KDE desktop (works with other desktops as well). It assists the user while creating high quality DVD compatible MPEG2 streams from any input video. It is designed to be easy to use, requiring little technical knowledge. You can get it here: http://kmpg2.sourceforge.net/

• (Spetember 24th, 2005 - by Bernhard)

  We have just released our newest version 1.8.0. Downloads are available from our Project page. Please give it a shot and report bugs to the mailinglist. Thanks to all of our developers for making this release possible!

• (April 30th, 2005 - by Bernhard)

  Matthias has written some hints together for recording with bttv cards in german. You also find scripts that do the work for you. http://www.fernmeldung.de/capture/

• (April 2nd, 2005 - by Bernhard)

  Jerome Cornet has written a enhanced version of yuvfps, called yuvmotionfps, which is a framerateconverter that interpolates the frames based on the motion of the blocks, to get a smoother motion. You find his tool here: http://jcornet.free.fr/linux/yuvmotionfps.html

• (March 28th, 2005 - by Bernhard)

  Mark Heath has written some extra tools for the mjpegtools: an averaging frame rate converter, an interlace to temporal order converter, a watermark detection and removal tool and a simple black fader. You find his tools here: http://silicontrip.net/~mark/lavtools/
  

• (Jan 1st, 2005 - by Bernhard)

  You might remember Open Source Developer Contest (http://www.linuxonpower.com/) also mentioned on the SourceForge Sitewinder Update. Right, James Klicman of the mjpegtools won a nice Price (one of the Dual G5 MACs). He wrote Altivec acceleration code for mpeg2enc.
  Congratulations to James

• (September 15th, 2004 - by Gernot)

  Johan Parent writes: Just a short mail to let you know that I wrote a small patch to produce mpeg stills (~ slides shows). Not very high on your requests list I guess but I just happened to need it ;) Made a small page to describe it all shortly at http://parallel.vub.ac.be/~johan/MpegStills/

• (September 15th, 2004 - by Gernot)

  Luca writes: I'm writing a Linux driver for the FAST AV Master. The overlay is working, but it is missing the whole JPEG chipsets management.

  I built a little web site where I put all informations I have (datasheets, driver, some experimental observations, etc.):

  http://avmaster.bnx.homelinux.net

  If someone have other informations or wants to help me in the development, please feel free to contact me.

• (June 6th, 2004 - by Gernot) Gabriel has recently released an mjpegtools-plugin for LiVES, a Free video editor/VJ tool for Linux, BSD and openMosix. The encoder plugin works only with version 0.9.1-pre1+ of LiVES which can be downloaded from http://www.xs4all.nl/~salsaman/downloads.html.
  See his original posting for detailed information.


• (February 4th, 2004 - by Ronald) We have just released our newest version 1.6.2. Downloads are available from our Project page. Please give it a shot and report bugs to the mailinglist. Thanks to all of our developers for making this release possible!
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LML33, Iomega Buz and Miro DC10 page

German Miro DC10 page