iPod batch conversion?

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hey everyone. So I got a nice new iPod 5.5g for christmas :) It up and running with dual booting apple / rockbox firmware. If any of you have iPods and want to play vorbis, FLAC, musepac, etc then check out rockbox - it's very nice.

So I'm sure the "how do I convert video for an iPod" question has become an abused dead horse...I've got a twist on the question.

I have had good results - excellent results as a matter of fact using AviSynth/MeGUI's profiles. For animated content, I have been quite happy with x264 at ~200kbps for 320x240, and 96kbps HE-AAC.

However, it's very time consuming to take a variety of inuput files like MPEG-1 .MPG, MPEG-4 .AVI, .OGM, and .MKV, etc and get them into AviSynth correctly. This often involves demuxing/decoding the audio first with DGIndex / VirtualDub, writing a script for each file with unique crop/resize settings, then setting up a job in MeGUI etc..

I am wondering if there is a way to streamline this workflow a bit, to the point where I can drop in any input file, select iPod profile, select output size,wash rinse repeat until I have a lot of files queued, and then push go and come back 2 days later and have a nice folder of iPod spec MP4s.

Maybe this can be done with MeGUI, maybe some of the other popular GUIs, I'm just not really familiar with others. Suggestions?

Thanks
~MiSfit

[Sirber]

I have had good results - excellent results as a matter of fact using AviSynth/MeGUI's profiles. For animated content, I have been quite happy with x264 at ~200kbps for 320x240, and 96kbps HE-AAC.iPod only supports AAC LC, not HE nor HE+PS.

[Blue_MiSfit]

You're right! After examining the file with YAMB I discovered that it is in fact LC. My mistake!

[Pookie]

Just some ideas if you want to do it via an actual batch file

I've found ffmpeg does a good job of decoding audio tracks to .WAV for most file sources. Perhaps something like


ffmpeg -i "input" -vn -y -ac 2 "output.wav"

ssrc/normalize/replaygain/etc

neroAacEnc.exe -br 9600 -lc -if "output.wav" -of "output.aac"

The video part will be tougher, especially determining things like aspect ratio, fps, and crop. Mediainfo.exe will give you that information.

Mediainfo "input" >input.txt

Codec : XviD
Family : MPEG-4
Info : XviD project
Codec settings : BVOP / Packed Bitstream
PlayTime : 1h 42mn
Bit rate : 1693 Kbps
Width : 640
Height : 352
Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.313
Writing library : XviD0041

That info should let you create your AVS file dynamically - especially useful for setting the proper xxxxSource("input").

If "codec"=="XviD" echo avisource("%1") >>input.avs

The Autocrop plugin might come in handy

Props to the original poster for these x264 settings -


"x264.exe" --bitrate 850 --level 3 --keyint 240 --min-keyint 24 --no-fast-pskip --nf --no-cabac --subme 6 --analyse
p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,p4x4 --vbv-maxrate 10000 --qcomp 0 --scenecut 50 --me umh --progress --no-psnr --output "video.mp4" "input.avs"




Finally, make sure to use NicMP4box.exe to mux the audio and video...



Then again, this guy has put something together that isn't half bad (uses all of the preferred tools) :

http://www.vapulus.com/w900i/M3-0.8.9.7-Installer.exe

Discussion

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=815408&page=90&pp=15

[Blue_MiSfit]

Thanks for the help Pookie. I wasn't up for diving into batch files, bur M3 really seems to be a decent GUI! It's not as customizable or flexible as MeGUI, but it's very simple and has a wonderful batch system. Many TV shows have been converted for Mr. iPod!

~MiSfit

[dasiy0627]

You can convert e.g. DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb,dvr-ms, MPEG, WMV, AVI, MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC, M4A, WAV,MPG, AC3to iPod Movie / iPod Video MPEG-4 format using iPod video converter (http://www.my-video-converter.com),Easily captures your video as you like with the accurate start point and finish point.And you can convert multiple files with certain settings at a time, instead of waiting the files to be converted on by one.save you a lot of time,you can select the output type, frame rate, video size, audio frequency to meet different needs for different iPod (http://www.my-video-converter.com/video_to_ipod/)