Easiest Tool for .TS to MP4?

[arcticool]

I recently bought Nero Recode, but have not had success. I have a thread over there with 71 views and no responses, and it looks like Recode is full of bugs so after dropping 80 bucks (ouch) I'm looking for a new tool. My requirements are:
1. It works :)
2. It is fairly easy with a nice click the button and go kind of gui.
3. It is generally h.264 quality.
Thanks,

AC

[bond]

propably there is no way except going via avisynth

create an .avs script with directshowsource pointing to your .ts file (you will need to be able to play the .ts file in a directshow player to get this to work)

maybe one of the guis discussed in this forum (megui aso) will be able to help you with this

[Morte66]

There is no easy way to do it with the free tools, in the sense that Recode and DVDShrink are easy. I can think of two ways to handle this less painfully than the other options:

1) What Bond said. Make an avisynth script and put a DirectShowSource command in it to open the .TS via DirectShow. This is simple if you know how and gibberish if you don't, and there are no guides AFAIK.

2) Follow the guides for encoding DVDs with a GUI like MeGUI or StaxRip, except you put your .TS files into DGIndex instead of feeding it .VOB files ripped from DVD. You potentially get better quality this way, because it uses a different MPEG2 decoder that can feed hints to clever Avisynth filters like ColorMatrix().

They both work, but option 2 is probably easier for a beginner.

[Pookie]

DVBMenc can do it - Super Simple Front-end for mencoder, handles TS input files.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/nexx1/dvbmenc/dvbmenc_beta0.1i.zip