PLEX transcoding

[MorganO]

i have about 450GB of videos, and i want to transcode all of them from MPEG4 to H.264 which is what my chromecast+ipad use, is there a way to do this in one go?

many thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

ffmpeg script

[MorganO]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

ffmpeg script

do i download it or are the programs i can download?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, KOMTechAndGaming said:

do i download it or are the programs i can download?

 

download ffmpeg and install/compile.

 

then

for i in *.avi;
  do name=`echo $i | cut -d'.' -f1`;
  echo $name;
  ffmpeg -i $i $name.mov;
done

 

and change the ffmpeg settings, and change file file type you want to encode and whenere you want it.

[mariushm]

H.264 is a video codec , the most popular software encoder that can compress a video using the h.264 algorithm is x264

 

MPEG4  is a collection of standards, or if you mean MP4 , it's a file container.. An MP4 file stores video and audio and subtitles, where the video part is compressed either with MPEG-2 or H.264 (also known as AVC)  or VC1 or H.265 (also known as HEVC) and the audio part is compressed with MP3 or AAC. 

 

For Apple products I guess the desired codecs would be h264 and AAC.

 

So what I'm trying to say is that your videos may already be compressed in H.264 , so you may not achieve smaller files by doing what you're thinking of.

 

Maybe you have 1080p or 720p videos ... then you could get lower the size of your videos by resizing the video frames  to 1280x720 or 960x540 (for 1080p videos) or 640x360 (for 720p videos) and then choosing a minimum quality setting in the video encoder (x264).

 

Handbrake may have some profiles for iPhone / iPad, basically a preset for the x264 encoder, in order to create videos that can be decoded easily on your tablet, with as little as possible battery consumption. Check that out.

MeGUI should also have such profiles, but I'm not sure it has batch processing or some friendly way of converting lots of videos in an automated way.

 

 

 

[MorganO]

Just now, mariushm said:

H.264 is a video codec , the most popular software encoder that can compress a video using the h.264 algorithm is x264

 

MPEG4  is a collection of standards, or if you mean MP4 , it a file container.. An MP4 file stores video and audio, where the video part is compressed either with MPEG-2 or H.264 or VC.1 or H.265 / HEVC  and the audio part is compressed with MP3 or AAC

 

So what I'm trying to say is that your videos may already be compressed in H.264 , so you may not achieve smaller files by doing what you're thinking of.

 

Maybe you have 1080p or 720p videos ... then you could get lower the size of your videos by resizing the video frames  to 1280x720 or 960x540 (for 1080p videos) or 640x360 (for 720p videos) and then choose a minimum quality setting in the video encoder (x264).

 

Handbrake may have some profiles for iPhone / iPad, basically a preset for the x264 encoder, in order to create videos that can be decoded easily on your tablet, with as little as possible battery consumption. Check that out.

MeGUI should also have such profiles, but I'm not sure it has batch processing or some friendly way of converting lots of videos in an automated way.

 

 

 

this is what plex says when playing things on either device

[mariushm]

The hardware video decoder in iPad may have some limitations, meaning some video streams won't play well on iPad without converting them to another format.

 

Also, in your case plain "MPEG4" may refer to MPEG4 ASP ( DIVX, XVID) , H264 is MPEG4-AVC and H265 is MPEG4-HEVC

 

So what you're watching was probably compressed with XVID and the audio track is probably MP3 or AAC ...

 

Plex knowns the iPad can decode mp3 or aac so does direct streaming for the audio part, but there's few devices which can decode in hardware XVID so Plex knowns the iPad would use more power decoding XVID with the processor compared to using the hardware decoder in its video card, so it decides to transcode the video part to H264 so that the video would play smoothly on the iPad.

 

So if the video doesn't fit in those limitations, PLEX may decide to transcode to a format that would fit those restrictions.