Context: I’m currently using an older Samsung phone to convert h264 dashcam videos to HEVC/h265 to save space. These are many, 10 minute long videos, and the process is incredibly labour intensive, since I have to do each one manually.

The conversion itself is really fast (maybe 2-3 minutes), and the results are excellent (usually half the size with the same quality).

Question: Is there software for Linux that can convert at similar speeds, preferably batched? Handbreak has been incredibly slow.

Caveat: I’m using a Framework 13 (11th gen Intel) laptop with an Intel integrated graphics card, so I can’t really leverage that in the same way a dedicated GPU can be. But still, I can only imagine that my laptop should be able to outperform my super old phone! LOL

I’m not really looking to compress the videos (I’ve experimented, and the quality loss from an already “poor” source just doesn’t cut it). HEVC/h265 conversion would be ideal.

Is there anything else I can try?

  • Hellfire103@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    FFmpeg is your friend. Here’s a command that should work:

    mkdir converted; for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i $i converted/${i::-3}.hevc; done
  • solrize@lemmy.ml
    1·
    11 months ago

    Everyone uses ffmpeg for this and Handbrake probably uses it also. I do most of my own conversions on a cheap dedicated server so it’s not a big deal if it takes a while, but yeah, h265 is slow.

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.caOP
      01·
      11 months ago

      Handbreak is really slow, though. For context, in the time it takes handbreak to convert one of these videos, I would have done like 5 or 6 on my smartphone.

      Batch conversion is great, though. I just need it to be done in less than an entire day. 😢

      • Taasz/Woof@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Did you set it up to use Intel Quicksync? If you’re using CPU only it’s going to be insanely slow.

        so I can’t really leverage that in the same way a dedicated GPU can be.

        You can, and Intel Quicksync is often better than a dedicated GPU for transcoding video.

  • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    11 months ago

    You’re wrong about not being able to levelage your Intel graphics. Intel 11th gen has hardware HEVC (h265) encoding. Your Samsung phone probably also has HEVC hardware encoding faster than your CPU encoding. You want the ffmpeg hevc_vaapi codec, and it should go even faster if you use -hwaccel vaapi for decoding.