I‘ve download files in ogg formats which is unrestricted by software patents. However, my video editing application is not accepting .ogv video file. How do I convert .ogv to .avi using Linux or Unix bash command line options?

You can use any one of the following command to convert .ogv to .avi video / audio format.

[a] mencoder (MPlayer’s Movie Encoder) is a simple movie encoder, designed to encode MPlayer-playable movies to other MPlayer-playable formats. It encodes to MPEG-4 (DivX/Xvid), one of the libavcodec codecs and PCM/MP3/VBRMP3 audio in 1, 2 or 3 passes. Furthermore it has stream copying abilities, a powerful filter system (crop, expand, flip, postprocess, rotate, scale, noise, RGB/YUV conversion) and more.

[b] FFmpeg – Another video converter command line app for Linux and Unix like operating systems.

Converting .ogv video files to .avi using mencoder command

Type the following command:

mencoder input.ogv -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o output.avi

Where,

1. input.ogv : Your .ogv file.
2. -ovc lavc : Encode with the libavcodec codec.
3. -oac mp3lame : Encode with the lamp mp3 audio codec.
4. -o output.avi : Output file i.e. .avi file.

Verify file type, enter:
$ file my-demo-video.ogv
Sample outputs:

my-demo-video.ogv: Ogg data, Skeleton v3.0

Convert using mencoder, enter:
$ mencoder my-demo-video.ogv -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o my-demo-video.avi
Sample outputs:

MPlayer SVN-r31918 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
success: format: 0  data: 0x0 - 0x3cd7b3
libavformat file format detected.
[ogg @ 0x2b6b100] max_analyze_duration reached
[lavf] stream 1: video (theora), -vid 0
VIDEO:  [theo]  1264x848  0bpp  15.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
[V] filefmt:44  fourcc:0x6F656874  size:1264x848  fps:15.000  ftime:=0.0667
Opening video filter: [expand osd=1]
Expand: -1 x -1, -1 ; -1, osd: 1, aspect: 0.000000, round: 1
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [fftheora] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg Theora)
==========================================================================
Movie-Aspect is 1.49:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
videocodec: libavcodec (1264x848 fourcc=34504d46 [FMP4])
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Pos:   0.1s      2f (12%)  0.00fps Trem:   0min   0mb  A-V:0.000 [0:0]
[VD_FFMPEG] DRI failure.
Pos:  42.8s    642f (100%) 143.88fps Trem:   0min   2mb  A-V:0.000 [494:0]

Flushing video frames.
Writing index...
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.

Video stream:  494.277 kbit/s  (61784 B/s)  size: 2644380 bytes  42.800 secs  642 frames

Converting .ogv video files to .avi using ffmpeg command

Type the following command:
$ ffmpeg -i my-demo-video.ogv -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -acodec libmp3lame my-demo-video.avi
Sample outputs:

FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.9-4:0.5.9-1, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
  configuration: --extra-version=4:0.5.9-1 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libdirac --enable-libgsm --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --disable-stripping --disable-vhook --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libfaad --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
  libavutil     49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
  libavcodec    52.20. 1 / 52.20. 1
  libavformat   52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0
  libavdevice   52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
  libavfilter    0. 4. 0 /  0. 4. 0
  libswscale     0. 7. 1 /  0. 7. 1
  libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
  built on Jun 10 2012 08:33:06, gcc: 4.4.5
Input #0, ogg, from 'my-demo-video.ogv':
  Duration: 00:01:01.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 522 kb/s
    Stream #0.0: Invalid Codec type -1
    Stream #0.1: Video: theora, yuv420p, 1264x848, PAR 1:1 DAR 79:53, 15 tbr, 15 tbn, 15 tbc
Output #0, avi, to 'my-demo-video.avi':
    Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 1264x848 [PAR 1:1 DAR 79:53], q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 90k tbn, 15 tbc
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0.1 -> #0.0
[mpeg4 @ 0x25ee4c0]removing common factors from framerate
Press [q] to stop encoding
frame=  642 fps=171 q=0.0 Lsize=    2114kB time=60.00 bitrate= 288.6kbits/s    
video:2087kB audio:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.294511%

Converting many files

Create a shell script called ovg2avi as follows:

#!/bin/bash
# ovg2avi - Covert ovg to avi
# Author: Vivek Gite <www.cyberciti.biz> Under GPL 2.0+
# -------------------------------------------------------
input="$1"
output="${input%%.ogv}.avi}"
 
die(){
   echo -e "$@"
   exit 1
}
 
[ $# -eq 0 ] && die "Usage: $0 input.ovg\n\tI will convert .ovg file to .avi format."
[ ! -f "$input" ] && die "Error $input file not found."
 
if [ -f "$output" ] 
then
	read -p "Warning output file $output exists. Overwrite (y/n)? " ans
	case $ans in 
		y|Y|YES|Yes) 	mencoder "${input}" -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o "${output}";;
	esac
fi

To covert many files simply use bash for loop as follows:

for o in *.ogv
do
   /path/to/ovg2avi "$o"
done