Converting Home Movies (multiple formats) to x.264

[llmercll]

Hello!

I've got a lot of home movies that I need to convert to x.264, mainly for space saving purposes. They are in a multitude of different formats with horrible compression, and I would like to make them into the "optimized" h264 with as little quality loss as possible.

I've been out of the game for awhile, but I did some work with virtual dub and MEGui a few years back, basically forgot everything I learned though.

I'm wondering which method you guys can recommend to me. Quality is preferable to ease and speed, but I don't know how to do anything very advanced, so using 1 or 2 programs with UI's is preferred =)

thank you so much!

[hech54]

I've got a lot of home movies that I need to convert to x.264, mainly for space saving purposes.

Horrible idea.

Quality is preferable to ease and speed

Then leave them as they are and buy a bigger HDD.

[budwzr]

Why do you "need" to convert them? To play on an iPad/iPhone/iPod?

You can upload them to YT, then download them back as H.264. Or you can just set up a channel and leave them on YT and share via link.

EDIT: Oh, I see you wanted to save space. In that case it's not worth the effort. If what you have now is "horrible", recoding it won't cure that. H.264 is great for recording in cameras because of the smaller file sizes, but that doesn't translate into what you are thinking it's good for, correcting "horrible" videos.

[budwzr]

As a side note, positioning yourself into AVC/AAC is an excellent move generally speaking because video is so "distributed" now and will continue in that direction.

Portability is king now, and the day is coming soon that the "TV", computer, and handheld device will carry the same content and the same interactivity.

And the best format to be in is 720p30 AVC/AAC because it's widely supported everywhere.

[hech54]

You can upload them to YT, then download them back as H.264

What!!??!!??

[llmercll]

Can you expand on why you think it's a horrible idea? I've converted DVD's to x.264 in the past and achieved nearly identical picture quality, using a third the space.

Maybe I worded it poorly, but by compression I mean the filesize in accordance to the image quality. =)

I know that recoding can't improve picture quality, but I've got some files that are 30mins, low resolution, and the size of 720p video!

[hech54]

Can you expand on why you think it's a horrible idea?

Yes.

nearly identcal

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+WD+Elements+1TB+External+USB+2.0+Hard+Dr...&skuId=9875576

[llmercll]

What's your problem? I don't want to buy another hard drive, and the minor loss in picture quality doesn't bother me.

[budwzr]

In that case, maybe Handbrake is an option.

Nobody has any way to know what you've got, what you want to do with it, what you know and don't know, whether you care about where you can play the files, etc.

The purists will say one thing, pragmatists will say something else, it's all good in the grand scheme, and depending on where your head's at.

What's your problem? I don't want to buy another hard drive, and the minor loss in picture quality doesn't bother me.

[llmercll]

Thanks, that looks pretty good =)

[budwzr]

It's a double Whopper with cheese.

[Baldrick]

Cleaned thread. Just stay away from the thread if you don't like it....


Any x264 encoder gui will work fine like handbrake, xmedia recode, staxrip, etc.

[llmercll]

OK, I went to convert with handbrake, and the image came out great for the most part, but it's darker than the source. Any ideas?