gHacks technology news » encode videos http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:24:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 StaxRip Video Encoding http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/20/staxrip-video-encoding/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/20/staxrip-video-encoding/#comments Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:18:44 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7748 StaxRip is an Open Source video encoding software that can turn videos into mpeg-4 format using codecs like x264, XviD and DivX. It can for instance be used to turn a video DVD into a much smaller sized video with barely any quality losses that can easily be stored on the computer. One interesting way is to use it to rip a TV series season to the computer creating those handy 350 Megabyte videos per episode. That way a complete season takes between 4-8 Gigabytes of hard drive storage compared to the up to 17 Gigabytes that it would demand if stored in DVD format.

One of the nicest features of StaxRip is the fact that it can download needed codecs and utilities from within the program interface. If you dealt with Open Source video encoders before you might have experienced that you needed to download and install the needed extras manually before the tool could be used.

StaxRip makes use of templates to speed up configuring the various settings and can convert or merge single or multiple files in one go. A video file that is loaded as a source will automatically be analyzed by the video encoding software and important values such as framerate, length or size will be shown in the interface. The same variables are shown in the destination pane where they will be automatically updated when the user changes a setting.

video encoding

Videos can be resized to reduce the size of the destination video which is extremely useful when encoding videos for mobile devices like the Sony PSP, a mobile phone or an iPod that can play videos.

The output audio and video codecs have to be chosen. Multiple encoding profiles are available that range from fast to high quality encodings. The codecs can be configured furthermore for optimal results.

Video encoding speed depends on the configuration and the speed of the computer hardware.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/20/staxrip-video-encoding/feed/ 0 Convert DVD movie to Avi http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/14/convert-dvd-movie-to-avi/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/14/convert-dvd-movie-to-avi/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:56:56 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/14/convert-dvd-movie-to-avi/ I like to convert my DVDs into avi format and put them on my XBOX hard drive or notebook hard drive to store them in a space saving manner. This means as well that I do not have to carry DVDs with me when on the road with my notebook. For that I was searching for a easy and fast method to convert a DVD movie into an avi file using xvid or divx as the codec.

A program suitable is DVDx which is able to convert a DVD movie in just a few steps. Download the software from the source above and make sure that you also got the codecs installed, if you do not have it download the xvid codec from Koepi. Start DVDx after installing the software.

The first step is to load a DVD folder. I use to have the DVD video_ts folders on my hard drive already and just point DVDx to that location. It asks to pick a title from a list of available ones. If there is more than one title in the list select the one that fits the movie length.

select title

Most of the settings in the next window can be left unchanged. The important settings are found under Misc. Select the correct iDCT and check Audio / Video Synchronization. If you have a NTSC DVD you need to change the Output Frame Rate from PAL to NTSC 29,97. Click OK.

input settings dvdx

We are almost done and back in the main menu. Click on the output settings button in the toolbar (third from the right). Here we select an appropriate codec. Select AVI from the top left menu and Use Lame as the audio codec. Now select a video codec, choose either XVID or Divx.

output settings dvdx

Select YUY2 under Export (Avi+Premiere) and under Resize the appropriate BiLinear for your processor. Finally change the Resolution to 640×480 and click on the Whole button. An estimated file size should appear that gives you a good estimate of the expected file size of the avi that you create.

Click OK again and then on the Select Output button which is the second from the right. Click on the Browse button in there and select a directory and filename where you want to save the video in.

Click OK and then on the red button on the right. This starts the conversion. It takes some time though but the results are great. You can play around with the settings, especially those of the encoder that you use to increase quality but for my needs the default settings are just fine.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/01/14/convert-dvd-movie-to-avi/feed/ 5 Automatically add new videos to your iPod http://www.ghacks.net/2007/05/02/automatically-add-new-videos-to-your-ipod/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/05/02/automatically-add-new-videos-to-your-ipod/#comments Wed, 02 May 2007 13:36:07 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/05/02/automatically-add-new-videos-to-your-ipod/ How are you normally transferring new videos to your Apple iPod Video player ? You create or download them, transcode them into a format that your iPod video understands, add them to iTunes and sync iTunes with your iPod Video again. What if there was a way to automate every single step of this procedure after creating or downloading new videos ? Yeah, I thought that you would like that. To automatically add new videos to your iPod Video you need the free iPod software Ipodifier. Just download iPodifier which has a size of about 8 megabytes and install it on your system.

ipodifier automatically add videos to apple ipod video playeripodifier automatically add videos to apple ipod video player 2

A wizard pops up the first time you start iPodifier that walks you through the process of configuring the software to be able to immediately use it. You select a directory for all your converted movies that can be played by your iPod Video and choose if those videos should be automatically added to iTunes and synchronized to your iPod video as well. After configuring several other settings such as cpu priority for transcoding the videos and the option to schedule them you can select a source directory that should be observed from now on.

It is again important to use the wizard to configure this step as well by providing information about the source files, select the iPod video codec, the video quality and video size the selected videos will be automatically transcoded and transferred to iTunes. This is by far the best solution that I have tested for this process.

It is also possible to combine iPodifier with DVR software that you might be using such as TiVo, SageTV, BeyondTv or Windows Media Center Edition. Great tool for everyone who owns an Apple iPod Video.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2007/05/02/automatically-add-new-videos-to-your-ipod/feed/ 1