Satya's blog - Flash video encoding with mencoder

I use mencoder to encode Flash videos for various reasons. Here's a command I use for videos of the kids:

mencoder $1  \
-ofps 30 \
-o $1.flv  \
-of lavf  \
-oac mp3lame \
-lameopts abr:br=64 \
-srate 22050 \
-ovc lavc  \
-lavcopts vcodec=flv:keyint=50:vbitrate=600:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 \
-vf scale=480:320

That gives 30 frames/sec with a video bitrate of 600 bits/sec, and audio sample rate of 22050. For a webinar, which has fairly static screen images, I drop the frame rate to 10 or so (-ofps 10), set a bigger video size (-vf scale=720:480), and change the keyframe interval to 250:

mencoder $1  \
-ofps 10 \
-o $1.flv  \
-of lavf  \
-oac mp3lame \
-lameopts abr:br=64 \
-srate 22050 \
-ovc lavc  \
-lavcopts vcodec=flv:keyint=250:vbitrate=600:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 \
-vf scale=720:480  \

Other possible options:
-speed 1.05 (change the speed, 1=original speed)
-vf-add rotate=1 (rotate the video; experiment with the numbers or read the mencoder man page)