Command line conversion tools

[balson]

Hi, I am looking for a command line driven vide conversion tool. I would like the abilit to convert raw DV to something like say quicktime/H264 from the comand line.

The reason being is that I will eventually have 100's, perhapes even a few thousand of DV clips on a SCSI disk farm that I will want to convert to some format other format. Somethin like the following:

$ convert -quality=100 -format=H264 -bitrate=nn -pass=2 input.dv output.mov

The tools cen be either freeware available in source form, or commecial. I do not care really.


Any guidance apprecieted.


Thanks, Jim

[jimmalenko]

Maybe ffmpeg and/or mencoder ?

[celtic_druid]

ffmpeg would probably make more sense. Why .mov though and not .mp4?

Good news is I believe that ffmpeg since a few days ago supports spec compliant mp4 output for AVC. Uses x264 for encoding which is much faster and better quality than QT. You need to limit what encoding features you use since QT doesn't even properly support main line profile decoding.

Bad news is that ffmpeg uses faac for aac encoding and it is no where near the best encoder out there. You didn't mention audio though I don't think.

[balson]

ffmpeg would probably make more sense. Why .mov though and not .mp4?

Good news is I believe that ffmpeg since a few days ago supports spec compliant mp4 output for AVC. Uses x264 for encoding which is much faster and better quality than QT. You need to limit what encoding features you use since QT doesn't even properly support main line profile decoding.

Bad news is that ffmpeg uses faac for aac encoding and it is no where near the best encoder out there. You didn't mention audio though I don't think.

Ya know, I could do .mp4 as well .mov. My goal here is to keep around all of the DV movies I have on permanent had drive storage. And keep around some form of compressed and/or lower quality movies for general viewing as well that is stored on a local SCSI Disk farm. Whatever format is kept locally, whether it be .mp4, .mov or something else, I can always go back to the original DV and comvert it into a new format at will. And to do this via a GUI would be too much to ask. Hence the need for command line tools that I can run in a shell script.


I looked at the ffmepg web site and it was stated that ffmpeg 1.0 was in the planning stages and that it would be complee rewrite. That's not a ringing endorcement for the code that currently comprises the ffmpeg source base. Bu I should still look at this. I mean, it's not like I'm goign to use ffmepg to convert all of my video for the rest of eternity, I'm only going to use it for local viewing while still retaining the original DV clips on long term storage.

When A better tools comes along, I can re-create my local video clips using any tool and/or another format if I choose.

So thanks for the ffmpeg link. And if there are other commane line tools out there, I'd love to hear about them.

The OS I'm intersted in is OS X an/or SOlaris/Linux source code.



Thanks, Jim

[celtic_druid]

Any other cl app is probably making use of ffmpeg anyway.

[balson]

Maybe ffmpeg and/or mencoder ?

I completely missed your suggestion of mencoder, probably because of the way you seperated your 2 sentences with a line. Bu yes, I will try mencoder as well. This will probably be my first choice actually becasue I alreay use mplayer alot. And the faxct that ffmpeg states that the next version will be a complee rewrite -- doesn't give me a good feeling abou the current code base of ffmpeg.


Thanks, Jim

[BJ_M]

mencoder uses ffmpeg as well anyway .... (i believe)

[celtic_druid]

Well exactly. To output mov you need to use libavformat's muxer since libmpdemux doesn't have one. Only does avi, mpg and raw video.

mplayer/mencoder will surely get a rewrite to for the next major version. Have you looked at mplayer.c? Simply the nature of such projects I think and to me it doesn't reflect badly. I mean when ffmpeg was started did they know that someone would reverse engineer ALAC? Hell Apple hadn't even invented ALAC. Every software really gets a major rewrite every so often. I mean otherwise Windows Vista would still be based on DOS like 9x/ME.

[ChrissyBoy]

And the faxct that ffmpeg states that the next version will be a complee rewrite -- doesn't give me a good feeling abou the current code base of ffmpeg.

Are you sure? Where did you get that from?

[balson]

And the faxct that ffmpeg states that the next version will be a complee rewrite -- doesn't give me a good feeling abou the current code base of ffmpeg.

Are you sure? Where did you get that from?

Well, no, now actually now that you mention it. I did see a reference to that on a web page that I got from that tools website. This site (videohelp) has alot of links to alot of different tools to work with. I apprently got ffmpeg confused with another tool. I tried to find this particular tool but was unable to. This particular tool stated on it's main web page that

" ... input was now being taken for 1.0, which would be a complete rewrite ..."

But what tool that was I can't remmber. I thought it was ffmpeg but it is not. I just looked at ffmpeg's site and there is not such statement there.

I must be more careful when making statement like that. I would not want to steer anyone away from what might be a good tool. Me being one of them. Thats for nudging me to clarify. I will also download ffmpeg and give it a try.


Jim

[Ai Haibara]

Actually, I think that's probably ffmpegx, the Mac version. I think Major was going to rewrite the GUI and some of the other things holding ffmpeg and the other components together, but I could be wrong.