h264enc

From the creator of divxenc and xvidenc, we are happy to introduce the h264enc project, which provides an advanced and open source shell script for encoding video files or DVDs to the H.264 format. It is an open source command-line script that provides users with an easy to use video encoding utility built around the MEncoder command from the well known MPlayer video playback software.

Helps users encode any video file or DVD-Video disc

The application helps users to encode any video file or a DVD-Video disc to a high-quality video stream using the H.264 video compression format, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding).

Features multiple encoding modes

You can use h264enc to encode video files in one pass, two pass, three pass, fixed-quant, and constant rate factor modes. In addition, you’ll be able to use various predefined quality presets, like film grain quality, near lossless quality, anime, VDPAU/DXVA extreme, high and insane quality, and much more.

Supports a wide range of devices

It comes with built-in support for several devices, such as Blu-ray, AVCHD, Android G1, Apple iPod Classic, Apple iPod, Apple iPhone, Apple TV, Archos 605, Archos 5, Blackberry Bold 9000, Nokia S60, Sony PSP, Sony PS3, Microsoft Zune, and Microsoft Xbox 360.

Supports deinterlacing of DVD-Video discs

Additionally, the program supports deinterlacing of DVD-Video discs and video files, interlaced encoding, DVD cropping, DVD subtitles, deblocking and deringing of video files, DVD denoising, and 11 different software scalers.

Supports various audio codecs

The project also supports various audio codecs, including MP3, MP2, AAC, AC3, PCM, and ADPCM, audio resampling, audio volume normalizing, video splitting, and support for more than 2 audio channels.

Supports batch encoding

In order to test or debug the encoding parameters, or in case you want to do batch encodings, the application allows you to load a batch file, which is usually generated by it. Its configuration file can also be customized to fit your needs.

Bottom line

All in all, h264enc is a very good video encoder software if you want to use the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression format. Unfortunately, it runs directly for the command-line, so you will need to learn how to use it before you can actually do some video encoding.

What is new in this release:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 10.4.6:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 10.4.1:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 10.4.0:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 10.3.7:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 10.3.4:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac++ instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication
• Small fixes to the video bitrate calculation code
• Small tuning to the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets
• Small cleanups

What is new in version 8.9.2:

• Set default audio codec for the Blu-ray/AVCHD presets to AC3
• Bugfix to the OGM muxing code. Second/third track were ignored when one selects AC3 audio
• Added keyint, keyint_min, nr and interlaced variables to the custom preset skeleton file 'preset.cfg'
• Moved the AACTYPE variable to the neroaac_audio_func() function and updated the specific parts that use it in the MKV/MP4 muxing code
• Do not automatically detect audio sample rate in directory batch encoding mode. Only do it for single file/dvd/vcd encodings as in batch mode, detection will only print the sample rate of the first file but not the other files in the directory so this can mislead the user in thinking that all files in the directory have the sample rate reported by the script. It is possible to implement sample rate detection for all files but since we don't know how many files are in the directory, I do not want the user to see a full screen with sample rate info of each file if he deals with a directory with a few hundreds or more files in it
• Disallow autocropping, if enabled in the config file, for directory batch encodings
• Small reordering to the MP4 muxing code
• Small update to the install script
• Updated the man page

What is new in version 8.9.0:

• Small improvement to the MKV/MP4 tagging code: support audio tagging of single file encodes with audio stream copy
• Use array variables ${SUBFILE[2] and ${SUBFILE[3] instead of ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub2 and ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub3 when dumping the second/third DVD subtitles
• Simplified the MKV cover art importing code
• Small improvements to video bitrate calculation with audio stream copy
• Use only one named pipe for all tracks when encoding to neroAAC/AAC+/Vorbis/FLAC
• Major audio code restructuring and partial rewrite. Converted virtually all audio code variables to array variables. This allows for easy extensibility and much less code duplication. It's very easy now to add as much audio tracks as one may want to the code with very little changes/updates needed to the containers code. Also the current changes may allow very easily to support different audio codecs per track in the future
• Added support for a third DVD audio track
• Updated the video bitrate calculation for target size to support the above audio changes
• Converted most of the variables in the video_subtitles_func() function to arrays. This moderately reduces some code duplication
• Updated the container muxing/tagging code to support the above audio changes
• Use external flac encoder to encode to FLAC audio as doing it through mencoder is terribly broken. This updates the config file to version 8 and adds the 'flac' encoder as dependency
• Set the default resampling filter to lavcresample as the other one gives problems when encoding to FLAC audio and resampling

What is new in version 8.8.7:

• Simplifications to the MKV tagging code which reduces some code duplication
• Bugfix: FAAC acodec2 variable has wrong mpeg value. Must be mpeg=4 instead of mpeg4. This results in failure in encoding of the second audio track when one selects FAAC as encoder
• Bugfix: FLAC audio was ignored for the second track due to missing value in the selection of the case statement
• Added support for tagging of MKV files when doing a directory batch encoding
• Replaced the IMPSUB1, IMPSUB2 and IMPSUB3 variables, used to import subs when input type is file/directory/vcd, by array variables EXTSUB[1], EXTSUB[2] and EXTSUB[3]. This allows for less code duplication as these array variables are shared by all input types (including DVD) and thus we only need to do a small loop and add their values if not empty to the MKVSUBS, MP4SUBS and OGMSUBS variables
• Use as temp directory $HOME/.h264enc/job
• Added new function audio_stream_copy_func() which will print a warning that audio stream copy in directory batch encoding mode is not recommended unless the user is certain that the files have a supported audio codec by the MKV/MP4/OGM/TS containers
• Group audio filters under a submenu similar to how the video filters are grouped
• Some small cleanups

What is new in version 8.8.5:

• Update to the video_subtitles_func() function: for DVD encodings, added support for importing up to three external subtitles into MKV/MP4/OGM. Also added support for hardcoding an external subtitle into the movie
• Updated the MKV/MP4/OGM muxing code to support imports of external subtitles
• Increased Psy RD from 0.5 to 0.6 for some presets
• If dumping of the second and/or third DVD subtitle fails and user has selected to import the subs into MKV/MP4, force an exit since container conversion will fail as the muxing programs will complain about the missing subs. If no container conversion is chosen or user has chosen not to import the subs and dumping of subs fails, just continue since there's nothing critical in this case
• Use mplayer -really-quiet option instead of redirection to /dev/null when dumping audio to a named pipe for neroAAC/Vorbis/AAC+ encoding
• Some small updates to the man page
• Updated the AUTHORS file

What is new in version 8.8.2:

• Add iTunes video title name to MP4 files

What is new in version 8.8.0:

• Added deinterlace combinations of Yadif + linear blend, linear interpolation, cubic interpolation, median deint, ffmpeg deint and lowpass 5
• Cosmetics to the help menu
• Added global audio function audio_filters_func() for calling the resample, volume normalizing and volume filters
• Added 16 new variables to the config file for enabling/disabling of specific audio/video filters and containers: ALLOW_FPS_CONVERSION, ALLOW_SCALER_TUNING, ALLOW_DSIZE, ALLOW_EXPAND, ALLOW_COLORSPACE, ALLOW_ASPECT, ALLOW_AUD_RESAMPLE, ALLOW_AUD_NORMALIZE, ALLOW_AUD_VOLUME, ALLOW_MKV_MUXING, ALLOW_MP4_MUXING, ALLOW_TS_MUXING, ALLOW_OGM_MUXING, ALLOW_SAMPLE_ENCODING, ALLOW_SCAN_MULTIPLE_VIDSTREAMS and ALLOW_SCAN_MULTIPLE_AUDSTREAMS, the last two are only effective on file and directory batch encodings
• Updated the man page

What is new in version 8.7.9:

• Automatically add the shebang line to batch files and make them executable
• Added new variable ALLOW_AUTOCROP to the config file which allows the user to enable or disable automatic cropping
• Added MP3 presets and updated target file size code to support them (requested by Rogerio Brito)
• Some minor adjustments to the hq, vhq, ehq, uhq and ihq presets; decrease b-frames by one

What is new in version 8.7.8:

• Small bugfix: video filters variables in the config file were not respected when one chooses to encode VCDs.
• Add video title meta-data for MKV and OGM when doing directory batch encodings

Requirements:

• MPlayer
• LAME
• libx264