ffmpeg: What are the most compatible encoding options?

[Rekrul]

I am trying to help a friend. I'm in the US and she's in Canada, so I can't just pop over and help her in person. She has a bunch of videos from various sources (phone, camera, sent to her, etc), and she wants to give them to her brother to view on his smart TV via USB.

Some of the videos play, and some don't, but they have no idea why only some of them work, even when they appear to be the same type of video.

I figured that I could send her a copy of ffmpeg along with a simple script that would re-encode all the videos in the current directory. However, I know next to nothing about video encoding beyond the absolute basics, so I have no idea what options I should include to produce videos that will hopefully be compatible with his TV.

I know there's no 100% guaranteed set of parameters that are sure to work on every device, but I was hoping there might be a set that is considered to produce the most compatible file for TVs, Blu-Ray players, and the like.

Can someone recommend a sample command line for converting videos to something that will hopefully play on most devices?

[october262]

I am trying to help a friend. I'm in the US and she's in Canada, so I can't just pop over and help her in person. She has a bunch of videos from various sources (phone, camera, sent to her, etc), and she wants to give them to her brother to view on his smart TV via USB.

Some of the videos play, and some don't, but they have no idea why only some of them work, even when they appear to be the same type of video.

I figured that I could send her a copy of ffmpeg along with a simple script that would re-encode all the videos in the current directory. However, I know next to nothing about video encoding beyond the absolute basics, so I have no idea what options I should include to produce videos that will hopefully be compatible with his TV.

I know there's no 100% guaranteed set of parameters that are sure to work on every device, but I was hoping there might be a set that is considered to produce the most compatible file for TVs, Blu-Ray players, and the like.

Can someone recommend a sample command line for converting videos to something that will hopefully play on most devices?

MP4 & MKV are the most compatible, do you know what the brand / model # the smart tv is ??
also what are you using to play the videos on the smart tv with ? like flash drive etc.

[Rekrul]

MP4 & MKV are the most compatible

Yes, I was planning to have it convert to MP4.

do you know what the brand / model # the smart tv is ??

No, but she has promised to check and let me know.

also what are you using to play the videos on the smart tv with ? like flash drive etc.

A USB flash drive.

I ran into the same problem myself with my friend's Blu-Ray player. I gave him a video that wouldn't play, so I tried just running it through ffmpeg with no options hoping that would fix the problem. It didn't.

[exekutive]

Use handbrake its pretty user friendly. Choose a moderate preset and low profile and level. Tell her to encode a short (few seconds) clip that her brother can use to test the hardware.

[Rekrul]

Use handbrake its pretty user friendly. Choose a moderate preset and low profile and level. Tell her to encode a short (few seconds) clip that her brother can use to test the hardware.

Thanks, I'll consider it.

Which version of Handbrake do I tell her to download for her Win7 system? None are explicitly labeled as being the last to support Win7.

[steptoe]

Have a look at FFmpegBatch, it basically does exactly what you're looking for but with a GUI



Just select the files or folder and it will convert them to MP4


I use it to convert MKV to MP4 for my EMBY MediaStreamer, I know I don't need to but I want everything uniform and it enables me to strip unwanted audio tracks or add/remove subtitles


https://www.videohelp.com/software/FFmpeg-Batch


https://www.videohelp.com/download/FFmpeg_Batch_AV_Converter_Portable_2.8.1_x64.zip




You can download the portable version, just extract the ZIP archive and it will run from anywhere


Choose the "Video : MP4 Stream Copy", in the presets and it will literally encode every video format to MP4 without encoding anything unless it has to so should be no loss of quality from the original video. Its also very fast as its just rewriting the video/audio as MP4


Click the "Sequential Encoding" to convert one file at a time, or click the "Multi-File Encoding" to convert multiple files at once. It will save the files into the folder "FFBatch" in the same folder without deleting or overwriting anything


There are plenty of options to mess with if you want to see what FFmpeg can do. I've tried a few FFmpeg GUI's and this seems to suit me and enable me to change almost every FFmpeg option




Plus, its 100% free. Not trialware, no malware

[Rekrul]

Choose the "Video : MP4 Stream Copy", in the presets and it will literally encode every video format to MP4 without encoding anything unless it has to so should be no loss of quality from the original video. Its also very fast as its just rewriting the video/audio as MP4

I can do direct stream copy with a batch file. I don't think that will fix the problem. There's something about the files that the TV doesn't like, and if all it does is copy the streams to a new file, it's highly likely that file isn't going to play either. The files need to be reencoded to make them compatible.

[pandy]

IMHO most compatible format is H.264 (BD-like i.e. HP@L4.0) with MPEG Transport Stream... this is probably most common denominator for TV hardware since at least 10 years.

[Rekrul]

IMHO most compatible format is H.264 (BD-like i.e. HP@L4.0) with MPEG Transport Stream... this is probably most common denominator for TV hardware since at least 10 years.

Some of the files that won't play are already H.264 in an MP4 container.

[Skiller]

But are they HP@L4.0?

You can check with MediaInfo.

[pandy]

IMHO most compatible format is H.264 (BD-like i.e. HP@L4.0) with MPEG Transport Stream... this is probably most common denominator for TV hardware since at least 10 years.

Some of the files that won't play are already H.264 in an MP4 container.

If H.264 HP@L4.0 don't work then probably MPEG-2 MP@HL is maximum supported by TV HW. This may be true for older US (ATSC) TV's.
MPEG-TS container is native container for worldwide TV broadcast and it is also implemented in TV HW so it may be more compatible than any other container.