Linux command line tools for Converting AVI to H264/AAC mkv

[Psykro]

Hi guys.

I'm looking for a good tutorial or suggested tools (and I'll work through the man pages) for linux (ubuntu if possible) command line tools that I can use to convert SD AVI video to the best possible high quality/small size ratio MKV (using H24/AAC). Hope this makes sense.

Thanks in advance.

[redwudz]

Try AVIDemux. Not sure about command line tools that will work for Linux. Our other Linux tools here: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/linux-video-tools

For Ubuntu, I would try their forums. http://ubuntuforums.org/

You might also look in our Linux Forum. I'll move this thread there.

[Psykro]

Thanks, wasnt sure myself which forum to post it on.

Thanks for the links, will try them out

[Selur]

check out: http://h264enc.sourceforge.net/

[jagabo]

x264 should work for the video.

[ronnylov]

ffmpeg with x264 is what I would use and it can be done in different ways.
1) You can use libx264 directly with ffmpeg
2) or you can pipe the decoded video from ffmpeg to x264 program.
3) or you can compile x264 with lavf or ffms support and open the avi file directly as input file to x264

You can use neroAacEnc to convert audio to aac (it may give better quality of AAC compared to ffmpeg aac encoder).

MKVToolnix can be used for muxing mkv files.

If you want to use avisynth you can use it with wine and pipe the output to x264 using avs2yuv.exe or avs2pipe.
With avs2pipe you can also redirect audio output from avisynth. See http://doom10.org/index.php?topic=759.0

To learn x264 CLI options you can type x264 --fullhelp on command line.

[fholmes]

I am too after the same thing right now. I am using ffmpeg on the command line with x264 compiled into ffmpeg. I also want the smallest file size with acceptable SD quality. mkv format is also my preferred output container format. I have tried a few different things but I am not sure if I am getting the best results. I have 8 cores available for processing video and do not mind doing a two step process if it is going to have better results.

There are so many different formats out there. I know depending on the source and type of video there might be different ways of processing as well. Cartoons vs a TV Show basically. I wish this was a more straight forward process but it is definitely one of the hardest to learn at even an intermediate level.

Any help is appreciated!

[ronnylov]

With x264 you can use the presets for quality or speed (I use slow, slower or veryslow because I prefer quality over speed) and tunings for different sources like film or animation. Use the crf mode to set a constant quality mode and just choose a crf value that is good enough. I use crf 18 mostly.

[jagabo]

With CRF encoding there's very little difference in quality between the different presets. The major difference is in the file size. And, of course, encoding time.

[chicken264]

i think off only two programs
1. handbrakecli (don't know waht it is called in linux) a very good video converter to mkv/mp4. this is installed with handbrake.
2. ffmpeg (with x264)

using x264, demuxing/coverting/muxing audio is a big task for small files you are looking for.