clever FFmpeg-GUI, small FFmpeg UI, fully portable, no installation.

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.5.04), online now.

Added:
Audio volume detection result info.
Check for raw videostream adding in multiplex grid; it's blocked now (thx to Findu for the hint).
Settings button in select source grid; you can now change target folder and ffmpeg bin folder locations (thx to Findu for the hint).

Fixed:
Bug in update reminder.
Bug in wrong start position values automatic correction.

[Lathe]

It's interesting, I was doing the full UHD movie 'STIR OF ECHOES' and I noticed that at the 200 nit setting it was coming out rather dark. So, just to try, I changed the nit setting to 150 and it came out beautifully!

I wonder why certain UHD movies with the default 200 setting come out just fine whereas occasionally a few others need to be set at either 150 or in one case 100?

[GeoffreyA]

Originally Posted by Lathe

It's interesting, I was doing the full UHD movie 'STIR OF ECHOES' and I noticed that at the 200 nit setting it was coming out rather dark. So, just to try, I changed the nit setting to 150 and it came out beautifully!

I wonder why certain UHD movies with the default 200 setting come out just fine whereas occasionally a few others need to be set at either 150 or in one case 100?

Each film has a different average brightness, which, I think, leads to varying results. If possible, I recommend giving libplacebo in FFmpeg a try. It computes average brightness frame by frame, and the results are drastically better than the static NPL way of handling it.

Last week, after months of breaking my head, I converted all three "Lord of the Rings" and the results were truly excellent, beating, I think, even the official SDR versions in range of brightness and darkness. The brightness was spot on, and best of all, there's no NPL setting to fiddle with.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by GeoffreyA

Each film has a different average brightness, which, I think, leads to varying results. If possible, I recommend giving libplacebo in FFmpeg a try. It computes average brightness frame by frame, and the results are drastically better than the static NPL way of handling it.

Last week, after months of breaking my head, I converted all three "Lord of the Rings" and the results were truly excellent, beating, I think, even the official SDR versions in range of brightness and darkness. The brightness was spot on, and best of all, there's no NPL setting to fiddle with.

Yes, I remember you talking about that and doing all that work to figure it out. But, without a nice, EASY interface like Clever (or Handbrake) I don't think I have the complex encoding knowhow to do that. I wouldn't mind trying it, but I have no idea where to start.

I can do very simple CMD line stuff and I can do very simple AVS stuff, but that's about it. The coding to do what you are talking about would probably be too complex for me to understand. But, I'm glad you figured it out, it would be kinda nice to be able to understand it though...

[GeoffreyA]

I agree it would be a great help to many if Clever or Handbrake added libplacebo as a choice.

If you would like to give it a go, you can paste the following into a BAT file, place ffmpeg.exe in the same folder, and drag your UHD MKV onto the BAT file:

ffmpeg -init_hw_device vulkan -i %1 -map 0:v:0 -vf libplacebo=peak_detect=true:tonemapping=spline:gamut_mode=perceptual:w=1920:h=-1:downscaler=spline36:colorspace=bt709:color_trc=bt709:color_primaries=bt709:range=limited:format=yuv420p,sidedata=delete -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -level 4.1 -crf 18 TEST.mp4

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.5.05), online now.

Added:
Output filename check with automatic rename.

Fixed:
Bug in cutted parts list reset.
Bug in cutting/muxing videos with hidden data streams (thx to Lexi for the hint).
Bug im mux maps handling.
Several small bugs.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by GeoffreyA

I agree it would be a great help to many if Clever or Handbrake added libplacebo as a choice.

If you would like to give it a go, you can paste the following into a BAT file, place ffmpeg.exe in the same folder, and drag your UHD MKV onto the BAT file:

ffmpeg -init_hw_device vulkan -i %1 -map 0:v:0 -vf libplacebo=peak_detect=true:tonemapping=spline:gamut_mode=perceptual:w=1920:h=-1:downscaler=spline36:colorspace=bt709:color_trc=bt709:color_primaries=bt709:range=limited:format=yuv420p,sidedata=delete -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -level 4.1 -crf 18 TEST.mp4

Wow, thanks! Heh, I THINK I can do that... Awesome, I'll look forward to giving it a try.

So, is this kind of a 'Universal' script that I can apply to any UHD film? Are there parameters that I will need to adjust or change for any reason?

Thanks again Bro!

[GeoffreyA]

Originally Posted by Lathe

Wow, thanks! Heh, I THINK I can do that... Awesome, I'll look forward to giving it a try.

So, is this kind of a 'Universal' script that I can apply to any UHD film? Are there parameters that I will need to adjust or change for any reason?

Thanks again Bro!

No problem, brother.

It should work for any film. Note that the audio isn't handled, so you'll have to do that separately and mux it. (We can put that into the script, but from a quality point of view, I wouldn't because of FFmpeg's AAC encoder. But if you want, it's easy.)

It's going to encode the video with x264. You can adjust the CRF parameter for the quality-size tradeoff. Try 22 if 18 results in too big of a file. And this is just testing but if you're doing a permanent encode, add "-preset veryslow -tune film" after CRF.

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by GeoffreyA

No problem, brother.

It should work for any film. Note that the audio isn't handled, so you'll have to do that separately and mux it. (We can put that into the script, but from a quality point of view, I wouldn't because of FFmpeg's AAC encoder. But if you want, it's easy.)

It's going to encode the video with x264. You can adjust the CRF parameter for the quality-size tradeoff. Try 22 if 18 results in too big of a file. And this is just testing but if you're doing a permanent encode, add "-preset veryslow -tune film" after CRF.

Yeah, that will be interesting, I've never tried this kind of script before and it does look fairly straightforward. I always mux the audio later anyway with TSMuxer, especially if I have to take a TrueHD audio file in an MKV container and use UsEac3to to create a TrueHD+AC3 file. So, I always just concentrate on the video by itself.

Oh, just an observation, but I find it interesting that when taking say a 65 Gig UHD file and depending of course on the film, many times I can get away with a CRF of 17 or even 16 and still render a Blu-ray compatible file around 12-18 Gigs or so. But, of course when a movie has perhaps a lot of grain or action, I have to raise that up to 19 or 20 sometimes so that it will fit on a Blu-ray after muxing the audio and allowing for the M2ts headroom.

In order to be Blu-ray compatible, I usually use the 'Medium' setting, and with Handbrake where you can add specific x264 parameters, I then tweak the Psychovisual, Trellis, and a couple of other settings a tad higher, but I don't know if you can do that with this script (that is the ONE thing I wish I could do with Clever FFMpeg... )

Thanks again, I look forward to trying this!

[GeoffreyA]

Originally Posted by Lathe

Yeah, that will be interesting, I've never tried this kind of script before and it does look fairly straightforward. I always mux the audio later anyway with TSMuxer, especially if I have to take a TrueHD audio file in an MKV container and use UsEac3to to create a TrueHD+AC3 file. So, I always just concentrate on the video by itself.

Oh, just an observation, but I find it interesting that when taking say a 65 Gig UHD file and depending of course on the film, many times I can get away with a CRF of 17 or even 16 and still render a Blu-ray compatible file around 12-18 Gigs or so. But, of course when a movie has perhaps a lot of grain or action, I have to raise that up to 19 or 20 sometimes so that it will fit on a Blu-ray after muxing the audio and allowing for the M2ts headroom.

In order to be Blu-ray compatible, I usually use the 'Medium' setting, and with Handbrake where you can add specific x264 parameters, I then tweak the Psychovisual, Trellis, and a couple of other settings a tad higher, but I don't know if you can do that with this script (that is the ONE thing I wish I could do with Clever FFMpeg... )

Thanks again, I look forward to trying this!

You've got a solid process. Indeed, for my part, I just encode for playing on the computer and TV, so Blu-ray compatability hasn't been on my mind. For the audio, I just downmix to stereo, normalise with EBU R128, which solves the classic soft-dialogue problem, encode with qaac, and use MP4Box to put it all together.

Yes! CRF can be a pain with heavy grain and other sorts of material. I'm struggling to get a decent size for Arrow's 1080p RoboCop, whose grain is a nightmare; and even Criterion/StudioCanal's 1080p Mulholland Drive is giving me a hard time, despite the grain being quite fine.

As for x264 parameters, yes, you can set them in the script. Look at the following reference and use a hyphen: for example, "-bluray-compat 1 -aq-mode 3 -aq-strength 0.8" or you can do it with "-x264-params bluray-compat=1:aq-mode=3:aq-strength=0.8" and so on. I'm not too sure about VBV settings for Blu-ray compatability, though.

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-codecs.htm...02c-libx264rgb

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by GeoffreyA

You've got a solid process. Indeed, for my part, I just encode for playing on the computer and TV, so Blu-ray compatability hasn't been on my mind. For the audio, I just downmix to stereo, normalise with EBU R128, which solves the classic soft-dialogue problem, encode with qaac, and use MP4Box to put it all together.

Yes! CRF can be a pain with heavy grain and other sorts of material. I'm struggling to get a decent size for Arrow's 1080p RoboCop, whose grain is a nightmare; and even Criterion/StudioCanal's 1080p Mulholland Drive is giving me a hard time, despite the grain being quite fine.

As for x264 parameters, yes, you can set them in the script. Look at the following reference and use a hyphen: for example, "-bluray-compat 1 -aq-mode 3 -aq-strength 0.8" or you can do it with "-x264-params bluray-compat=1:aq-mode=3:aq-strength=0.8" and so on. I'm not too sure about VBV settings for Blu-ray compatability, though.

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-codecs.htm...02c-libx264rgb

Excellent, thanks!

[ProWo]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 26, 2024 release version 3.3.6.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Added:
Automatic updater.
OS check for automatic/manual update.
Update reminder.
Audio volume detect result info.
Check to prevent the addition of raw video streams when multiplexing.
Settings button; you can see and change ffmpeg and target folder location, ffmpeg version info.
Outfile name check for already existing files and automatic rename.
Automatic file rename with stream extraction (request by Findu).

Fixed:
Bug in DVD-Rip.
Bug in DVD-Rip aborting (thx to Findu for the hint).
Bug in automatic start position correction with wrong values.
Bug in cutting/muxing videos with data streams (thx to Lexi for the hint).
Bug with mux maps.

Improved:
Code stability.

Changed:
FFmpeg version from start screen to settings.
Some cosmetics.
Output file destination (source or target folder) with button instead of checkbox.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Lathe]

Thanks Bro for all the hard work!

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.01), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

[Lathe]

Originally Posted by ProWo

Newest beta (v3.3.6.01), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

I like that new 'Settings' button on the front, sharp!

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.02), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.03), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.04), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.05), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).

[ProWo]

Newest beta (v3.3.6.06), online now.
(Changelog will follow in the next full release).