Convert Videos to phone (.3gp) and Visa Versa

[TREOdeJaneiro]

That's great info. Thanks!

According to the site, it sounds kind of slow. So what do your four clicks translate to timewise?

[skoenig]

Well for a fulll video say 2 hours.

It goes through several passes:

Demux separates audio from video streams
Audio is then converted in a spearate thread to whatever you chose in the options
Video is deinterlaced (quite complex really depending on the soure material)
For multipass conversion (I highly recommend 2 passes)
- Pass one goes through the video each frame to calculate things like optimal keyframe intervals, data required per frame and quantising settings
- Pass two actually does the converstion to whatever mp4 standard you choose using the data from pass one to optimally adjust the compression and also to match your required file size/image size.
Finally it reinterleaves the audio and video and ensures frame synch with the audio

Each stage can be tweaked and you can also include subtitles (which you get elsewhere) as image data built into the video stream as well as several language audio streams form the original content which allows you to switch between them at will at playback time (if you have a deent media player like th efantastic and free Media Player Classic).

On my other desktop which is a P4 3GHz with 1GB ram (pathetic by todays standards) the process takes about 2 hours but the results are worth it.

More importantly you can batch up several processes to run one after another. In this way I spend about 10 minutes setting up 4 dvds to be archived and then leave it over night.

When you install it, it actually installs several different bits of software including the great all in one codec FFDShow. Each of these are the best of breed free software around. It's the same software used to create all those scary good quality dvdrips you can find on the internet. AUTOGTK is just a front end that lets you configure the settings of each piece which it thens runs and manages to produce the final output. This is similar to much of the paid for software out there. In cases they don't have their own compressors and rely on code snippets, libraries and hackware at their central core.

Like my CD collection the best thing about ripping your dvd is so you can stick your dvds in storage and not have piles of them all over the place taking up space and or have those fugly 'towers' of media in your living. The backup aspect (which legally entitles you to create the avi) is extremely useful if you have small children as anyone who has will know how attractive those shiny disc and their packaging are. I just got sick of buying Toy Story again and again.

The core time is used up in the compression passes and here is the key. It does a bunch of stuff like YUV/RGB conversion (which is slow) for best quality output on a computer or hand held screen and auto (if it can) IVTC which rejigs the frame rate to a movie like ~24fps from the normal NTSC 30FPS - again if you asked for that option.

The beauty is it's free so give it a shot. I convert my DVDs to:

- 512 or 576 wide (height is variable depending on source: 16:9, Anamorphic or 4:3)
- 800MB oto 1300MB avis in XVID format
- MP3 audio at Variable Bit Rate up to 128-192kbps
- Frame rate i ask to be 23.976fps if it can do it well
- It auto crops black borders top and bottom since they're a useless waste of data in the final output.

For the width it pays for both speed and quality to choose a dimension of 8 or 16 since the quantize cells are 8 pixels wide.

Hope this helps. Trust me on this. These guys know what they're doing and love it. For them it's all about quality for data size.

So for the lawyers out there: Treonauts does not in anyway condone the copying of copyrighted material; discussion of such activity will lead to your posts removal and can lead to a banning. There's thousands of other places where you can talk about that, that will keep the lawyers in business for decades to come. But if you do want to talk about conversion of material you rightfully own..

Regards,

~ Steph

[TREOdeJaneiro]

After two days it was still demuxing, so I figure while free, it's not for me.

My system: Compaq Laptop, AMD Turion 64 789 Mhz processor, 2G RAM, XP Pro.

[LotusLord]

Video encoding/ transcoding is most taxing on the processor. That and your hard drive, since it's probably a 5400 RPM drive, as it's a laptop, are your bottlenecks.

[skoenig]

Wow TREOdeJaneiro, there's something up there! Shame really. Your system seems up to it.

I just ran it on my P-M 1.7Ghz here and demuxing Blade Runner took about 2 minutes.

Oh well...if paid for is your route then let us know how you get on! I'm not proud... hopefully you'll find a great and cheap alternative which at least is a more intergrated app.

~ Steph

[TREOdeJaneiro]

Originally Posted by LotusLord

Video encoding/ transcoding is most taxing on the processor. That and your hard drive, since it's probably a 5400 RPM drive, as it's a laptop, are your bottlenecks.

What's weird is that it only was using 0-2% of my cpu at any one time. I'm wondering if I am missing a setting somewhere....

[contradude]

I've heard great things about handbrake. supposedly one-click goodness for dvd ripping

edit: I'm an idiot. its GPL'd. anywho, free is better than paid right? :-p

[Sorian]

I know that this is a bit old but I have found this website that maybe of some use.

Media Convert

A free web-based converter for documents, text, archives, movies, images, music, monophonic & polyphonic ringtones

[TREOdeJaneiro]

Just a brief follow up:

All of this codec and video translation talk has awoken a sleeping giant and I am now studying Final Cut Pro and have moved a whole editing studio into my office! Editing is a lot of fun for me and I love FCP. I have to say though that conversions and codecs and formats are a never-ending study in themselves.

[forgot]

TREOdeJanerio, your back! Or did you ever leave?