Help converting videos to h264

[givmedew]

Over the course of 12 years I have amassed around 1TB of home videos, tv shows that I recorded with a video capture card, and videos that I saved from youtube.

The problem is that over that amount of time video codecs have changed quite a bit and I think it would be best that I re-encode everything to 264 so that it is compatible with my PS3 and so that I have the best size to quality ratio.

The problems/questions I have are as follows.

1) What program if any can automatically select an encoding profile by looking at the source files bit rate and resolution? I do not want to have to manually select the bit rate for each file I encode and I want to get the most out of the h264 and do not want to have to check each video to ensure the quality didn't get messed up.

2) What program will encode that fastest for multiple files. I have a NVIDIA GTX680 and a 6 core 960T running at 4GHz I would like to use a program that can take advantage of NVIDIAs processor and be capable of encoding more than 1 video at a time.

I have been looking at mediaespresso and mediacoder badaboom is not compatible with 600 series cards.

I would say the most important thing to me is that the program be able to automatically select the best settings for the specific file. I do not want it to use a much higher quality than needed.

The second most important thing to me is speed I need it to be able to encode from a list and if possible encode multiple videos at once.

 

[givmedew]

Well I've spent hours researching this and still can't find out if there is a program that fits what I want.

In theory or according to the specs several programs exist but after reading in depth reviews I found out that GPU or QuickSync enhanced encoding is not ready for prime time and can cause major problems with the videos they encode.

I think this is crazy and that they should all output the same exact video just with differing amounts of time to encode. I am upset to learn that there is a possible trade off to using gpu acceleration and that you must check each and every encoded video end to end.

This is not an option for me and it sounds like I am going to have to make a permanent back up of all the movies so that after converting them i find out one is poorly converted I can go back to the source file. In other words I now have to spend $100 on a hard drive to do this.

If anyone has had any experience with converting a ton of videos with differing qualities and codecs for the sources please let me know what you have experienced with different programs.

I am probably going to start with the largest videos first.

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Also this is a source that speaks of the many issues and it is recent
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/128681-the-wretched-state-of-gpu-transcoding/2?print

 

[TiZakit]

First I know this isn't want you want, but this is what I would do. It also isn't the most space efficient way of doing it. It gets the job done with minimal hassle.

I'd just batch them all into handbrake regular profile, and walk away from the PC for good while. You aren't dealing with multiple audio tracks and subs, so this should go fairly straight forward.

 

[givmedew]

First I know this isn't want you want, but this is what I would do. It also isn't the most space efficient way of doing it. It gets the job done with minimal hassle.

I'd just batch them all into handbrake regular profile, and walk away from the PC for good while. You aren't dealing with multiple audio tracks and subs, so this should go fairly straight forward.

After installing xilisoft, handbrake, and MediaCoder and making several comparison videos I have not been able to achieve one of the most important things.

Since I am using this to reduce the size of the files and make them ALL PS3 capable I need to batch a ton of files without changing the resolution and without ever increasing the size of the file.

I can not figure out how to get it to look at the quality of the source and select an appropriate bit rate to either keep it the same size or smaller but NEVER larger. It is taking low bit rate videos and uping the bitrate

I no longer care for CUDA since there is a lot pointing at it messing up the quality anyways plus I am even willing to do 2-pass since essentially I can just walk away from the machine and let it run for a month if need be.

 

[TiZakit]

I'm not at a windows 7 PC right now, so I cannot confirm, but I believe you can view a folder in "details" view, and then add a bitrate column.

Now sort by bit rate, and you should be able to do these in smaller batches.

One of the issues with converting smaller bitrate videos, is that the lossy artifacts are now taken to be part of the base and the conversion is going look like crap at the same bitrate. Noisey picture -> Convert @ same bit rate -> more noise.

This is normal Generation Loss. There really isn't a way around this unless you use a significantly higher bitrate. I'm not exactly sure how multi-pass VBR would react in this instance, however.

I'm moving. My laptop died and my desktop is packed away. I only have internet access at work. Responses are delayed.

 

[gottcha]

Xilisoft Video converter

http://www.xilisoft.com/video-converter.html

Works great with Nvidia Cards and faster.

 

[givmedew]

I'm not at a windows 7 PC right now, so I cannot confirm, but I believe you can view a folder in "details" view, and then add a bitrate column.

Now sort by bit rate, and you should be able to do these in smaller batches.

One of the issues with converting smaller bitrate videos, is that the lossy artifacts are now taken to be part of the base and the conversion is going look like crap at the same bitrate. Noisey picture -> Convert @ same bit rate -> more noise.

This is normal Generation Loss. There really isn't a way around this unless you use a significantly higher bitrate. I'm not exactly sure how multi-pass VBR would react in this instance, however.

I'm moving. My laptop died and my desktop is packed away. I only have internet access at work. Responses are delayed.

As far as sort by bit rate that does not work because it sorts it by the audio bit rate which is just STUPID!


Thanks for the info on the issue with converting lower quality bit rates. I think I am going to just forget about doing this for now. I'm kinda sad lol because I really wanted to make them ALL PS3 compatible without having to use a transcoding server but I will just keep using that as it is compatible with my jailbroke apple tv in the other room as well.