Extract audio stream from a video file by "mencoder"

mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm -benchmark test.avi

Converting & joining multiple MPEG-1 files into one AVI

• convert with "ffmpeg" ::

ffmpeg -i input-1.avi -r 24 output-1.avi
ffmpeg -i input-2.avi -r 24 output-2.avi
ffmpeg -i input-3.avi -r 24 output-3.avi
ffmpeg -i input-4.avi -r 24 output-4.avi

• cat them together ::

cat output-1.avi outout-2.avi output-3.avi output-4.avi > out_tmp.avi

• recreate the audio/video index with "mencoder" ::

mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy out_tmp.avi -o out_final.avi

• OR, in one mplayer command:
  
  
  
  

  mencoder -forceidx -oac copy -ovc copy file1.avi file2.avi -o final_output.avi

• OR, use 'avimerge':
  
  If on Debian/Ubuntu, "apt-get install transcode-utils" ... doing this will make sure, 'avimerge' is present in the system.
  
  avimerge -o output.avi -i input1.avi input2.avi

Playing/Saving RAM files with mplayer

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile last_stop.rm -playlist http://boss.streamosXX.com/real/dreamworksXX/eelsXX/electroshockbluesXX/videoXX/laststop_hi.ram

The trick to play .ram file is to add -playlist, as .ram files are just textfiles containing the real url.
saving is done by -dumpstream & -dumpfile filename