Converting video software

[Bruinator]

What software do you recommend to convert video from mp4 movies to avi format that is reasonably fast?  Yes, I know it depends on PC specs so plz ignore those facts.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Before you waste time on "free" video converters that ultimately require payment to unlock the convert process, see if you can achieve it through VLC player first https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-convert-on-VLC-a-MP4-file-to-a-AVI-file VLC ships with the required codecs for playback, encoding etc.

[Bruinator]

29 minutes ago, Steven P. said:

Before you waste time on "free" video converters that ultimately require payment to unlock the convert process, see if you can achieve it through VLC player first https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-convert-on-VLC-a-MP4-file-to-a-AVI-file VLC ships with the required codecs for playback, encoding etc.

Does it normally take a 2 hours to convert? If yes, is there faster software to accomplish this?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

Unfortunately, this is kind of one of those "how long is a piece of string"-type questions.  The amount of time it takes for the program transcode files is going to vary by the amount of data that needs to be processed, what types of out format(s) you choose, performance of the computer doing the transcoding, and so forth.

 

My best suggestion would be to try converting a variety of different videos of the same length, see how long it takes to convert each one, and compare the results so you get an idea of the minimum, maximum, average and mean times to convert video.

 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

4 hours ago, Bruinator said:

Does it normally take a 2 hours to convert? If yes, is there faster software to accomplish this?

 

[Steven P. Administrators]

10 hours ago, Bruinator said:

Does it normally take a 2 hours to convert? If yes, is there faster software to accomplish this?

Yeah, what Aryeh said. It's impossible to know without knowing your PC setup and the video file.

 

I am not sure, but I think VLC live streams and converts, so if you are converting a 2hr movie, that's possibly why it would take so long. You might have to do a bit of searching for converting video files with VLC and see if there is a way to speed up the process.

 

Personally, I haven't used the convert feature of VLC and like I say there are programs dedicated to converting but they will cost money. I used VideoProc in the past and that was okay.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

When I was converting videos I was using HandBrake. No one can say whether the process is fast though, there are too many variables to make such a sweeping statement.

[Steven P. Administrators]

44 minutes ago, Nick H. said:

When I was converting videos I was using HandBrake. No one can say whether the process is fast though, there are too many variables to make such a sweeping statement.

I FORGOT ABOUT HANDBRAKE! 😮 

[fusi0n]

1 minute ago, Steven P. said:

I FORGOT ABOUT HANDBRAKE! 😮 

Handbrake is awesome  I still use it to this day

 

Happy Friday!! 

[+BudMan MVC]

Why would you want to convert to avi??  Uggh that is horrible Idea.. Is a antiquated container.. MKV would be much better choice to change to mp4 too.. And you can alter the container in a few seconds vs transcoding it..

 

If you gave some details of what you have in mp4 and why you think you want it in avi would could better determine your options.

 

BTW handbrake converts to mp or mkv, it can not convert to avi.

[farmeunit]

I use Any Video Converter because it's easy.  Just don't install the extra crap that comes with it.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

if just changing the container then I just use FFMPEG. it's the command line tool that most GUI tools use as their backend anyway

 

https://ffmpeg.org/

 

super easy to use too;  say you want to convert AVI to MP4 it would be the following command:

 

ffmpeg -i infile.avi youroutput.mp4

 

[Bruinator]

Is possible to use some kind of format (IE..xvid, mp4, wmv, avi..etc) to play a movie off a USB flash drive on portable dvd player? I know some formats can be placed on an SD card and view it on a portable dvd player but I am not sure which ones. Anyone know which ones are possible?

 

thx

[Brandon H Supervisor]

5 minutes ago, Bruinator said:

Is possible to use some kind of format (IE..xvid, mp4, wmv, avi..etc) to play a movie off a USB flash drive on portable dvd player? I know some formats can be placed on an SD card and view it on a portable dvd player but I am not sure which ones. Anyone know which ones are possible?

 

thx

depends on the portable player; if it supports doing that then it should give the supported formats in the user manual

[Bruinator]

1 hour ago, Brandon H said:

depends on the portable player; if it supports doing that then it should give the supported formats in the user manual

This is the dvd player here.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071LPLGMN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1   

 

Thx Brandon and everyone else for the help. 

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

1 minute ago, Bruinator said:

This is the dvd player here.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071LPLGMN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1   

 

Thx Brandon and everyone else for the help. 

Google is your friend

Quote

 Broad Compatibility with Multimedia: This portable video player supports direct play various discs( of all regions) from CD, DVD, CD-R/RW, DVD -R/+R, DVD+RW/-RW, VCD to SVCD (but not blue-ray DVD). USB and SD cards ( max to 32G ) are supported for playing MP3/WMA/WAV, JPEG, MPEG2/AVI/DIVX.

Source

[Rippleman]

6 minutes ago, Bruinator said:

This is the dvd player here.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071LPLGMN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1   

 

Thx Brandon and everyone else for the help. 

For simplicity, I always prefer FreeMake. Just make sure to decline their "offer" of an additional program to install when installing. 

 

https://www.freemake.com/free_video_converter/

[Bruinator]

2 hours ago, dipsylalapo said:

Google is your friend

Source

Yes, I tried converting the movies from mp4 to avi but it dont work on usb flash drive. Any ideas why it wont?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

14 minutes ago, Bruinator said:

Yes, I tried converting the movies from mp4 to avi but it dont work on usb flash drive. Any ideas why it wont?

do you get any kind of error message?

 

your container is now AVI but you may need to convert the audio and video codecs as well depending (this part may take some playing on your part)

[Bruinator]

2 hours ago, Brandon H said:

do you get any kind of error message?

 

your container is now AVI but you may need to convert the audio and video codecs as well depending (this part may take some playing on your part)

Is this part a PITA?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

1 hour ago, Bruinator said:

Is this part a PITA?

depends on what you consider a PITA

 

first you'll want to answer yourself the first question I asked in that post. Do you get any error message/is the device able to open the file?

 

if it straight doesn't open then you know the file is bad all together. If the file opens and "plays" then you know it's reading the AVI container.

 

If it's playing but you have no audio, video, or both then that's the codecs being incompatible.

 

after that it's just trial and error

trying the other supported codecs for the AVI container to see if they work on your device. sometimes you'll get lucky and your first alteration will work.

 

there's less codecs to choose from for AVI compared to modern containers like MP4s/MKVs so hopefully it shouldn't give you too much trouble.

[Marujan]

only avdshare

 

[+BudMan MVC]

A quick search thru the questions on your link found this

 

"The unit is pretty limited in the video format it will play, so it took some experimentation to figure out the details, which is actually my motivation for posting the review, to help others avoid the trial-and-error. The unit will play MPEG4 files (.mp4) extension, but will not play H.264 or H.265 (HEVC) encoded files. The player will also not play higher resolution content than standard definition, i.e. no automatic down conversion. This meant I had to re-encode our collection of movies to be compatible with the player.
In HandBrake, I start with the "Universal" setting, and set the width to 720, height is automatically detected (maximum value is 480). I use variable frame rate, matching the source. 128kb audio with AAC codec. Here is the tricky part: Video Quality is set to Constant Quality:8. At a value of 8, the video looks good enough, while not taking more room than the source file (encoded in H.264). At lower quality levels, the quality quickly degrades to the point where it will be hard to discern the content on screen and there will be lots of color blocking."

 

This seems to be missing the very important part of changing from 264

 

As to the quality setting that is not going to have anything to do with it playing, only the size of the file you produce.

 

[Bruinator]

I have changed different formats, frame size, frame rate, bit rate for video and for audio i have changed sample rate and what not and tried putting it on a usb flash and sd card and nothing works. The only thing that works on a few is audio. I tried freemake, handbrake, avs video to no avail.

 

Any ideas what else i can try?

[Bruinator]

Ok, I tried using handbrake with the following as an example only: webrip of 720p and file of mkv. Under  video, I selected Video codec of mpeg2, constant quality of 8, frame rate(FPS) of 30. Then I saved it to my desktop and selected the option start encode. When the process was done, I copied it to a usb flash drive and put it in my portable dvd player and it says "device not support".

 

What the heck am I doing wrong? In a few minutes I will try placing it on a SD card to see if that works. If it doesnt, work, could someone give me instructions and setting on software such as Freemake, AVS video converter or AVDshare to help me accomplish what I am trying to do. I would really appreciate it.

 

thx

[Brandon H Supervisor]

21 minutes ago, Bruinator said:

Ok, I tried using handbrake with the following as an example only: webrip of 720p and file of mkv. Under  video, I selected Video codec of mpeg2, constant quality of 8, frame rate(FPS) of 30. Then I saved it to my desktop and selected the option start encode. When the process was done, I copied it to a usb flash drive and put it in my portable dvd player and it says "device not support".

 

What the heck am I doing wrong? In a few minutes I will try placing it on a SD card to see if that works. If it doesnt, work, could someone give me instructions and setting on software such as Freemake or AVDshare to help me accomplish what I am trying to do. I would really appreciate it.

 

thx

according to what was posted above your DVD player doesn't support .MKV containers

It supports the MPEG-2 codec but not the .MKV container itself or .MP4 for that matter either.

 

Quote

 Broad Compatibility with Multimedia: This portable video player supports direct play various discs( of all regions) from CD, DVD, CD-R/RW, DVD -R/+R, DVD+RW/-RW, VCD to SVCD (but not blue-ray DVD). USB and SD cards ( max to 32G ) are supported for playing MP3/WMA/WAV, JPEG, MPEG2/AVI/DIVX.

If looks like you'll need a program than can encode to .AVI

 

edit: P.S. Your confusion with MPEG-2 likely stems from it being both a codec and a container itself. though it's less used as a container.

 

-----

 

from personal experience there are a couple things you can try.

 

1. You can use ffmpeg as I mentioned early in this thread. it's a super simple command line tool and is what most GUI apps use as the back-end as it is
   command example is "ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.avi"
    
2. You can also use VLC though there's a bit more playing/configuration needed here
   https://www.google.com/search?safe=strict&source=hp&ei=H0CeXP_nNcyItQXdpKzwBw&q=convert+to+avi+vlc&oq=convert+to+avi&gs_l=psy-ab.1.4.0l10.573.2964..9267...0.0..0.158.1954.0j14......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131.SrzhfAyh2bs

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

On 3/22/2019 at 7:27 AM, Steven P. said:

I FORGOT ABOUT HANDBRAKE! 😮 

Supports HEVC/H.265
https://www.techspot.com/article/1131-hevc-h256-enconding-playback/page4.html