Converting Digital Home Movies - Which Format?

[TWG1572]

I have a hodgepodge of movies that are in different formats. They are basically in whatever the native format of the device was. I can't remember them all, but we shot videos with our first Cannon Digital camera, a Flip HD, Panisonic Luminex, and now a Sony HD video camera. Windows will recognize and play them all, but I'm having issues with streaming some of the older files to watch on my TV through my Sony BDP. I get that it only supports X file formats, and I evidently have some movies that aren't supported. So be it. But it also got me wondering if I'd be wise to try and get my videos into commonly used formats that will stand the test of time (whatever that means in the computer world).

Thoughts? Are there 1-2 formats I should be getting my videos into? Any suggestions on cheap or free video converters? I dimly remember reading something where I should not use a program that uses accellerated encoding, but rather let the CPU grind through it. The final quality is supposed to be higher. Any truth to that?

I think my computer should have the horses to pull off video conversion, but I've never done it before and heard it is time consuming. I've got a FX6300 with 8MB ram. It's running at stock now, but I'm set up to push a decent overclock if extra grunt is needed.

 

[bepperb]

HandBrake is free (google it) and that would do a good job.

You might also consider using dvdflick to burn them onto DVD's for archiving. That free program does a great job of putting almost any video file onto a DVD, it's just very basic.

 

[Hokiefyd]

I've recently done some of the same. I use HandBrake for some of it and it works well. Your hardware is more than sufficient. I encode with a 2.8 GHz Apple iMac with 2 GB of RAM.

I try to use non-proprietary file types, but that gets difficult these days. For videos, I often use MP4. Although MP4 is based on Apple's QuickTime format, it seems to be supported on nearly every computing platform. Others may have a better suggestion on a more universal file format.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
For videos, I often use MP4. Although MP4 is based on Apple's QuickTime format,

MP4 is just a container and can use many different codecs for a video stream. The most commonly used codec with the MP4 container is probably H.264 which was developed by a group of industry experts. I'm not sure that it's based on anything Apple has created, but the content available on iTunes does use this codec.

EDIT: I take that back. QuickTime was the basis for MPEG-4 file format, although that's separate from the actual video codec that can be used within.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime#QuickTime_and_MPEG-4

 

[eljefino]

Handbrake is good; WinFF is a similar frontend. Both use FFMpeg, a good and open source encoder with options like MPeg2 and .264. (I'd use one of these two.) Whatever you do, save your original files somewhere so you aren't enduring another generational loss in five years when something else comes along.

Both can do batch encoding but WinFF is simpler interface-wise... drag & drop and let it go.

 

[Quattro Pete]

I didn't have much luck using the built-in presets in WinFF to convert some movies to Google Android format. Kept throwing error messages - something to do with incompatible codecs. Handbrake did the job though.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I recommend that you use Handbrake, first of all. There are many presets that encompass various levels of quality of various target devices.

I'd recommend, too, that you use a .mp4 container with the h264 video codec and either the AAC or MP3 codec for audio. Sadly, these are all proprietary, patent-encumbered formats but history implies that these formats will be both competitive or superior to other codecs in terms of quality, and you can be reasonably assured that devices and commonly-available software will still be able to play media encoded with these codecs in several years.

With h264, I'd use "2-pass" encoding and keep the quality/ bitrate on the high end; both because file size matters less and less as the years go by (read: storage gets cheaper) and because you're RE-encoding media that has already been encoded in a lossy codec: You'll need the quality. Keep the audio at or above 192kbps. I'd keep the frame rates (for video) and sampling rates (for audio) the same as the source materials.

 

[TWG1572]

Great advice guys. Appreciate it.

Handbrake is downloaded and I did a test run. I've only this computer built for about a month, but that's the first program I've seen flat max out my six cores while it's running. Guess I finally got my $$ worth out of the processor.

uc50ic4more - I do have a question on the quality settings you recommended. You say to use the 2 pass encoding with a high avg bitrate. I did some googling and one recommended setting was 2000+ so I went with 2500kbps. But, when I read the HandBrake Wiki it says that I'm better off going with the constant quality setting somewhere around 20-22. I know you said the 2 pass was better for lossy formats, so maybe that's where the difference is between your recommendation and HandBrakes?

Thanks everyone!

 

[eljefino]

A two pass encode spends the first pass seeing how "busy" the video is and how many bits that frame will get. The 2nd does the encode. A constant bitrate encode need only go once, it will use slightly more file space but less encode time. Un-busy frames will get a few "wasted" bits.

Since you're using this for a media server that will re-encode a third time when it streams, you may as well keep a big-ish file size... so long as the hard drive/ network can handle the file, which it should.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: TWG1572
uc50ic4more - I do have a question on the quality settings you recommended. You say to use the 2 pass encoding with a high avg bitrate. I did some googling and one recommended setting was 2000+ so I went with 2500kbps. But, when I read the HandBrake Wiki it says that I'm better off going with the constant quality setting somewhere around 20-22. I know you said the 2 pass was better for lossy formats, so maybe that's where the difference is between your recommendation and HandBrakes?

Thanks everyone!


I recommended the 2-pass and the high bitrate for two reasons:

1) Although the high bitrate will result in a larger file, storage is cheap and is getting cheaper. I don't know how important the media is that you wish to (re) encode, but in 15 years I would kick myself if the videos of my daughters looked all "lossy" when I had the storage space available to store large files.

2) You are re-encoding from already-encoded lossy video. Re-encoding will at best introduce new compression artifacts, and at worst will exacerbate already existing artifacts. Keeping the quality as high as is reasonable minimizes these effects.

The post immediately above this one is spot on: in a 2-pass encode, the first pass is a strictly analytical one, enabling the 2nd pass to optimize how compression and bandwidth (bitrate) are apportioned.

---

I tend to prefer variable bitrates so that the encoder can determine where the bandwidth is necessary and where it perhaps is not. It can still maintain an average bitrate and the variable rate allows and compensates for conditions prevalent in most "home" or "consumer" videos: extreme changes in lighting, motion and colour space; all of which tax an encoder's ability to balance size versus quality and be good at both. Professionally-produced video tends to have more controlled content in terms of light, colour and motion and for that type of media, perhaps a constant bitrate is more appropriate. My opinion, though, is that even when using a variable bitrate for professionally-produced content, the bitrate, as determined by the encoding software, simply may not need to vary to the extent that it might with less "controlled" content. No harm, no foul. It just seems, to me, to be a safer and more accommodating default for unknown content.

Having said that, I do not know as much about the h264 codec as others do. It's ability to squeeze that much quality into file sizes that ridiculously small borders on magic to me. The options you can set for h264-encoded videos are very detailed in Handbrake; and I presume they've set the defaults very capably. If you have the time, and especially if the media we're talking about is important to you and will be with you for years, I cannot suggest enough that you try a few different options. This way you'll learn about what these different codecs and settings do and offer; and you'll end up with the best looking videos!

Good luck!

 

[TWG1572]

Thanks again for all the info - I always like to understand what all the buttons/sliders do but video encoding is way out of my knowledge zone.

These are movies I'd like to have 15 years from now, and disk space isn't that big of an issue. I have something like 2TB free right now - and can always add more HDs to my computer if needed. Its nice to be getting back to pre-flood prices again.

I will be keeping an "archive" copy of the originals just in case.