Looking for an easy-to-use x264 GUI that includes a good AAC encoder

[Nossty]

Since Handbrake stopped including FDK-AAC in their releases due to GPL licensing issues, I've been feeling pretty much lost.

I've added NeroAAC to MeGUI and I can see it includes he-aac and he-aac + ps options, which would probably work pretty well for the bitrates I'm intending to use it for (64kbps), but I find MeGUI's UI to be pretty troublesome (it needs a bitrate calc just to calculate the filesize for 2pass) and rarely use it unless I need avisynth.
Far as I know, ffmpeg still includes the Fraunhofer library, but I only use ffmpeg for simple tasks such as trimming/changing containers. I prefer a GUI like Handbrake for transcoding.

Is there a good x264 frontend, much like Handbrake was (prior to v0.10.5, when FDK was removed), that comes with a good AAC encoder that can do 64kbps audio?
Thanks in advance!

[Bernix]

Hi,
you can try Avidemux, it has AAC (FDK) but disadvantage is not has batch processing at least easy to create, or if you have Nero aac, you can also try Hybrid, it has a batch and similar to Megui in the way it also use avisynth or vapoursynth, not both at once. I found Hybrid less confusing then Megui

Edit: it is your thing, but say 96kbps is better than 64kbps, saving 32kbps isn't big deal, but for audio encoding the difference can be big in output quality.

Bernix

[KarMa]

Megui can also do QAAC, which is Apple's AAC encoder. Have to enable it in the menu. QAAC is usually considered better than Nero at the lowest of bitrates.

[pooksahib]

I can recommend sticking with MeGUI and QAAC.

To get your AAC audio option: Launch MeGUI.exe, go to Options -> Settings -> External Program Configuration, and check Enable QAAC under the Misc section. There's no need to install iTunes but do download the installer. To extract the Apple AAC encoder files, you put the iTunes64Setup.exe from apple.com/itunes/download into the MeGUI\tools\qaac directory and run the makeportable.cmd. When it finished, it should leave two subdirectories QTfiles and QTfiles64 - now you can delete the iTunes installer there. (cheers to LigH.de)

[LigH.de]

MeGUI is mainly for advanced users who know a good bit about the technical details in the background. There are also users who prefer StaxRip for a possibly easier use, but it depends on your taste and experience.

[hello_hello]

..... but I find MeGUI's UI to be pretty troublesome (it needs a bitrate calc just to calculate the filesize for 2pass) and rarely use it unless I need avisynth.

There's no bitrate calculation required. Configure the x264 encoder for quality based encoding with your preferred settings, load a script for encoding along with some audio etc, click the AutoEncode button and specify a file size (or bitrate) when the AutoEncode window opens. When you do, MeGUI will do the maths and automatically switch to 2 pass encoding. The video bitrate will be the specified bitrate, or the total bitrate for the requested file size, minus the audio bitrate, minus a little overhead.

Far as I know, ffmpeg still includes the Fraunhofer library, but I only use ffmpeg for simple tasks such as trimming/changing containers. I prefer a GUI like Handbrake for transcoding.

Have you tried MeGUI's OneClick encoder? I don't use it myself because I prefer to preview everything before encoding, but it's quite configurable, and once you've set it up to your liking, you should be able to open a file (or it'll batch encode) add the OneClick encoding job to the queue, and the rest should be automatic.