convert mp4 to HAM video on Ubuntu

There is a script to convert mp4 files to .hv. It ran on 32-bit linux and won't work by default on 64-bit linux. Below are the steps I took to get it working on Ubuntu 22.04.

Install hvconvert

wget 1.node1.de/hvconvert.tgz
tar zxvf hvconvert.tgz

The above fetches and extracts the conversion program. But hvconvert depends on some things we need to set up.

Prepare environment

You'll get an error about avconv not being found. It's functionality has since been merged into ffmpeg, so we can fake it like so:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ffmpeg /usr/bin/avconv

I also did the following. It's possible they aren't all necessary but since it's how I got things working I'm giving the steps as I did them.:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt install libc6:i386
sudo apt install libncurses5:i386
sudo apt install libstdc++6:i386
sudo apt install lib32z1

Get remaining 32-bit libraries

These weren't available in the default Ubuntu repo. But I downloaded a small (50MB) ISO of Slitaz Linux which has the following libraries:

*libX11.so.6

*libXext.so.6

*libXpm.so.4

*libXrandr.so.2

*libXrender.so.1

*libxcb.so.1

*libXau.so.6

*libXdmcp.so.6

They need to be copied to /lib/i386-linux-gnu/ on your Ubuntu machine. Download them here:

https://archive.org/download/32-bit-libs-for-hvconvert/32-bit-libs-for-hvconvert.tar.gz

Finally, just run the program. I have an mp4 ready to test.

cd hvconvert
./hvconvert.sh 10sec.mp4

This works for me. Best of luck with it.

Alternative

Prior to this, as a quick hack I was using Virtualbox to boot the Slitaz.iso liveCD. I would run the wget and tar commands as above and use wget to download any mp4 files I wanted to convert. Then I would use scp to send the result to the host machine like so:

scp output.hv gunther@192.168.1.16:/home/gunther/Movies

Obviously, you would use your own IP address and destination path etc.

Since this is a LiveCD, I saved the state/snapshot with Virtualbox so I could return to it at any time. However, I prefer the other method so I can remove Virtualbox.

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