Converting a video file in arbitrary file format into MPEG4/H.264?

I want to convert a large number of video files in various formats into .mp4 files (container MPEG-4, codec H.264). I want to do this on an Ubuntu machine, using only command-line tools and I'm willing to install packages from main, restricted, universe and multiverse.

Ideally I'd like to be able to do ...

for VIDEO_FILE in *; do
  some_conversion_program $VIDEO_FILE $VIDEO_FILE.mp4
done

... and have all my video files in .mp4 format with container MPEG-4 and codec H.264.

How would you tackle this problem on an Ubuntu machine? What packages do I need to install?

From ubuntu knorv

• a long howto for ubunut 10.10 can be found here. But it looks a little bit complicated http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095

  From aatdark

• You will need to install these :

  sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-unstripped-52 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-50 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswsclale-unstripped-0 x264
  

  In Karmic, Lucid and Maverick you should replace "unstripped" by "extra" but since there is transitional packages this work too.

  And then you can use a script with :

  for i in *.avi; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -f mp4 "`basename "$i" .avi`.mp4";done
  

  And you can use options like these to set up resolution, video codec and audio codec and audio quality :

  for i in *.avi; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -s 352x288 -vcodec libx264 -vpre default -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -ac 2 -ar 44100 -f mp4 "`basename "$i" .avi`.mp4";done
  

  From Nyamiou The Galeanthrope