been trying a few free video encoders, none seem to do h.264 except SUPER. been going off dj food's specs for video, and based on the forum most people seem to concur that mp4 with h.264 and aac audio is best. i have only got massive 800mb dv and mjpeg files to work properly with vsl, all the other files i encode come out real small and stutter or are out of sync.

Prism seems to work really well but you gotta buy the plus version to get h.264 which i have not done yet

www.nchsoftware.com

movavi seems similar to prism, a bit more fancy, maybe not as good, still no h.264

movavi.com

SUPER seems to do everything but it appears you need to tweak it to get good results which i have not managed yet. If any one gets good results form it, please let me know!

you need to go through 3 pages before you get to the download link so here it is straight up...

www.erightsoft.info

they claim;

SUPER © Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer.
A GUI to FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, mppenc,
FFmpeg2theora & the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn.

If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file,
without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need.
It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.

ALL FREE, NOTHING TO SIGN, NOTHING TO PAY, NOTHING TO REGISTER.

The following minimum configuration is required to run SUPER©.v2008.build.30(Mar.22,2008) on your PC.

o One of the following OS: Windows© 98 (second edition), Windows© ME (final release)
Windows© 2000, Windows© XP, Windows© 2003, Windows© Vista.
SUPER©.v2008.build.30(Mar.22,2008) is NOT suitable to run in a Windows emulator environment like WINE or similar
o Full admin credentials within an admin session (for NTkernel OS). (Vista users, RightClick and 'Run as... Administrator')
o At least 1800 MHz Intel® Pentium4 processor or equivalent. (64-bit CPU or OS support is NOT guaranteed)
o 512MB of RAM or more.
o 20GB of free space (or more) on the Hard disk where the OS is installed.
o 1024 x 768 video resolution or larger.
o 32,000-color video or more.
o IE 5.01 or later.
o Internet connection

MediaCoder
mediacoder.sourceforge.net

+1
cleanest videos so far.
looks better than mainconcept.
it took me a week to get it dialed in but i've got almost no loss of quality from dvd to mp4...

itchie what settings are you using?

I experimented with Super and in the end stopped using it. I was having problems with the files after the conversation (ie SSL wasn't reading the file names correctly, SSL crashing after trying to change tags etc).

I also noticed that when you move the record quickly forward/backwards that the image would freeze a lot - this was due to the keyframes (which I dont think you can adjust in Super).

Hey itchie - what happened to Videora? Stopped using it?

mediacoder is it!
let's see...
under video:
*mp4
*2 pass 3000kbps crucial->change to Baseline Level 1.0 (change quality to 100)
*format- h264 (change the setting to be 'max & min interval between IDR frame=12
*source- auto select (which is ffmpeg x264)
*encoder- auto select
under audio:
*source- auto select
*encoder- faac (container aac)
*avg bitrate 160 low complexity
under picture:
*resize- 640x480
*framerate- 29.97 (global)
then in 'picture' menu click on effects:
check- deblocking, deringing, yadif 0 (best deinterlacer)
and at this point you can make the video darker sharper, all that. and under the audio menu you can normalize or boast the gain for those low audio videos... best thing about this program is the audio and video sync up better than any converter i've seen. i don't know how to post files but if somone schools me i can post up 'my mediacoder preset'
ps. it rips youtube to any settings. which means you can rip youtube to serato ready video in a snap. not that we wounld play youtube videos... *tisk tisk*

going to try the max and min interval setting...

and yes you can save the preset...file>save as preset

no, i'm saying i want to POST my preset file... so people can use my preset.

where is the 'quality' setting you set to 100?

my settings:
video
same as itchie's

audio
encoder: lame
rate mode: Target Bitrate
Bitrate/Quality: 160
All other audio settings default

ahh. you'll have to upload it somewhere. use mediafire.

if you click on 'mode' next to 2pass in the video menu. it will bring up i list of video options. some will override others without telling you so becareful. i messed with just about all the settings and most of them are for other encoders in the software or just plain useless.
lame is mp3 (i thought) you want aac. faac is a generic encoder for aac. it came recomended to me...

i wish there was a way people could post 10-20 sec of the same mp4 they encoded (no youtube or addition compression) so i can check quality of my encoding against someone else encoding. this seems to be most of my worries now... ARE MY VIDEOS CLEAN ENOUGH?

i have reference Matroska samples from the mediacoder forums. two matrix trailers one in xvid and one in mp4 (x.264).

ssl reference files would be great ideas. you could use movieinfobatch to compare.

oops!!! i'm using the nero encoder, not lame...

I cannot find this line either!

So I am totally lost on this whole conversation. Is everyone on the Mac side here? Is there anything wrong with me encoding from within Vegas? What is the best video encoder period (paid or unpaid)?

I thought everyone on MAC used visual hub.

man, thats the only setting I cant find on media encoder
the one you set to 100.

its been running all night for me, drop a folder and done.
the encodes look pretty good thus far

ffmpeg

now that i look at the encodes...

if you look you can see horizontal lines....
kinda annoying, i have to comparte originals a bit more

a-swift ffmpeg,,,, is that a lot of diffrent programs which runs in a dos.

Post the link and any settings that we might need I heard that ffmmpeg is really good but have yet to try it.

You need to choose yadif0 in the effects under deinterlace.

a good number of the free encoders are really just GUI front ends for ffmpeg. so if it's a good GUI and it uses ffmpeg in the background, use it!

i personally prefer the command line version since my video encodes are all automated.

the only gui front end i've used for ffmpeg is visualhub, which i like a lot. i use it when i need to encode something in a different format than my music video encoding script does. i heard they don't make it any more but the version i have works fine so i don't need a new version.

+1

ok i think i've found a good alternative to handbrake for pc users

Xilisoft MP4 convertor

as far as I can tell this app saves all your settings unlike handbrake, allows batch editing, just load all your files in one go and it will automatically create the new files based on the source name in your designated destination folder, plus it's fast... and you can tweak how it utilizes your pcs cores but by defualt is set to max speed...

not free [removed]

khy,

Please don't encourage software pirating on our forums. Pirating is stealing, which is of course, illegal.

sorry, meant to say you can buy it here...

www.xilisoft.com