Batch convert H265

[panyan]

Ive got a bunch of home movies that are in H264 and id like to convert them to H265 to save some space (we dont watch them that frequently)

The file size is more important than the quality - they are pretty grainy even at 1080p

I was wondering:

1) what is the best free converter that can do batches?

2) is gpu acceleration worth it? what software would be best for this?
(I have access to a 2x7970 rig and another rig with a K40)

I am on windows

thanks

 

[panyan]

Not sure it's the best but the recent version of Handbrake has h.265 encoding, I had a play with it and was pretty surprised at the file sizes with good quality settings.

I tried GPU acceleration with my 7950 and while it was faster, the quality compared to CPU encoding was not as good. But that was with h.264, I haven't tested with h.265 and not even sure if it will work considering there's no h.265 encoder on the GPU.

Thanks - do you know if handbrake can do batch conversions of h265 with the gpu? that would be ideal

If you can, encode from the originals, not the current H.264 files.

I've personally used Handbrake to do H.265 encoding directly from DVDs, like yourself, to replace my H.264 files and reduce size. During my research and testing, the biggest change I did was to change the denoise filter from hqdn3d to NLMeans. The output files look much better and because there is less noise for the encoder to deal with, the file sizes are reduced further, too. I can't emphasise this enough, but the quality of the NLMeans encoder is visually FAR better than hqdn3d. Do some testing on your own sources and I'm sure you'll agree.

I don't know what target size you have in mind, but I can very comfortably encode around 90 minutes in to a 308 MB file. Of course when you're looking at stills, the final encode might not look impressive - but when you're watching from over 6ft away, you will be very hard pushed to see any artefacting.

If you're encoding bluray sources, remember you're going to need to increase the quality from what you'd normally use for DVDs, to allow for the extra detail. If you try to use the same quality, the output will be noticeably blurrier.

Ah right - thanks for the tips and ill certainly look into NLMeans

 

[panyan]

I appreciate your help guys - lots of good advice here

 

[panyan]

I have made and used video software in the past, to achieve what you want for free with decent image quality and file size just use FFMPEG to re-encode the films to h.265 with a 2 pass method.

I really appreciate your guide. If I need to do some proper conversions in the future I will definitely use this method as it seems the most flexible.

Indeed. Open source and offers support for h265. I've been using it to re-encode a number of files in my library; with great results, which is the reason I wondered about your reasoning to simply use FFmpeg

Handbrake has been what I used so far and it seems to work well. It has a batch feature which i find very useful as the FFmpeg cmd stuff I wouldnt know how to batch setup.

I have actually just downloaded it and am very surprised to find it actually has an option to set a constant bitrate and use a 2 pass method. Honestly i could now recommend like you to use handbreak. I had no idea it has been updated so much and is actually really user friendly.

Yes, this is what ive currently used, but if I need to do it again i might try to set up a batch ffmpeg command line setup



thanks for all your help guys