Noob converting .avi to .mp4 - how?

[blablarg18]

I have a programming background, but it's outdated and I know almost nothing about video. I'm on Windoze.

I have an old, fudgy-looking 630x430 .avi that I need to convert to .mp4; probably H264 or H265 although I don't know which is preferable.

I've tried some test conversions in handbrake & VideoProc.

I like the result from handbrake going to H264 with decomb and a light denoise and sharpen.

I like the result from VideoProc going to H264 with a light boost to brightness & saturation.

What I WANT, is all of it. (decomb, light denoise, light sharpen, brightness & saturation)

What is the best way? For a noob, that might mean the easiest way?

For some reason I don't understand, handbrake has no way to tweak brightness or saturation. And although VideoProc has a Sharpen filter, it has no way to tweak the filter strength, nor to add a video denoise. (VideoProc thinks that "denoise" means audio)

My chief idea, at the moment, is to "somehow" capture the ffmpeg parameters of both apps' conversions and combine them into my own ffmpeg command line. But how would I even capture their ffmpeg command lines?

Any suggestions?

[jagabo]

You might try using AviDemux. It has lots of adjustable filters. The king of video filtering is AviSynth+. It has a steep learning curve because it's script driven. But with a programming background you'll probably take to it pretty quickly. There's also VapourSynth, the successor to AviSynth, which uses Python scripts.

[blablarg18]

Thanks. I tried avidemux.

I feel a bit concerned, because it resized to 640x480 without letting me say I want to keep the original screen size (& frame rate, for that matter). But... I gotta admit... it gave the best result thus far!