Best free encoder but also....

[AlexRisk]

....wich one does not delete tracks and subtitles after the first? I would like to compress video but keeping multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitles in it.....

[lordsmurf]

Hybrid can retain multiple audio and sub tracks.

[AlexRisk]

Thanks Im trying to compress several movies but all of them fail on subtitles, audio tracks or image... It´s difficult for a newie! haha....

[stax76]

staxrip would support it too but like hybrid it's not exactly beginner friendly, maybe try handbrake or vidcoder.

[AlexRisk]

staxrip would support it too but like hybrid it's not exactly beginner friendly, maybe try handbrake or vidcoder.

Okis. Thanks!!

Quick question: 1500 framerate its ok for a no-high definition movie?

[babygdav]

1500 is a good start.

Handbrake.fr generally works well starting with the presets, then tweaking them as desired.

[jagabo]

1500 framerate its ok for a no-high definition movie?

You mean bitrate? Forget bitrate, use constant quality encoding. You'll always get the quality you specify.

If you have lots of files to process similarly, you can't beat ffmpeg in a batch file. Put ffmpeg.exe in c:\windows then create a batch file (on your Desktop or somewhere else convenient for you) with Notepad:

ffmpeg -i %1 -vcodec libx264 -preset medium -crf 18 -acodec copy -map 0 "%~nx1.mkv"

Then you can drag/drop any source video onto it to reencode the video while keeping the original audio, subs, etc. If you put the batch file in your SendTo folder you can right click on any video file and select Send To --> NAME.bat to reencode that video. NAME is whatever you called the batch file.

If you find the files are turning out larger than you want use a higher crf value. Quality won't be as good though. You can use a lower crf value to get higher quality (and bigger files).

If it's too slow you can use a faster preset. Try veryfast. The quality won't be as good though. Using a slower preset like slow will get you better quality but will take longer. The possible presets are (in order from fastest and lowest quality to slowest and highest quality) ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow, placebo. There's usually little point in going faster than veryfast, or slower than slower.

There's not much difference in speed/quality between the different free programs -- they're all based on the same open source, free encoders. The difference is mostly in the default settings they use. For example, there is a 100 fold difference in encoding speed between x264's ultrafast and placebo presets.

There are many examples of how to use ffmpeg in these forums. Especially one big thread:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/386028-FFmpeg-Batch-for-Windows

There are many GUI front ends for ffmpeg too. And it's easy to create a batch file that reencodes every video in a folder, even a folder tree.

[AlexRisk]

Thanks guys

[stax76]

@jagabo

Please have a look at powershell, it's 100 times better (not an exaggeration!).

Here are 290 powershell guides, a lot of them teach basics:

https://adamtheautomator.com/tag/powershell/

Best experience is with Windows Terminal (Windows 10) and VS Code for editing.