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I tried very hard to use ogg for encoding a video about 1.5 years ago as well (it was a requirement) and it was so painful. The tools are awful and it took me 5

by smokinn 16y ago

I tried very hard to use ogg for encoding a video about 1.5 years ago as well (it was a requirement) and it was so painful. The tools are awful and it took me 5 tries just to get something that wouldn't crash most players if you tried seeking. After I finally got something valid, I ended up settling with a file 1.6x the size of the h264 file I would've created that looked only a little worse. For amateurs like me ogg is hard. h264 is easy.

aw3c2 16y ago
ffmpeg2theora is easy. http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/
- ugh 16y ago
  Ok, command line interfaces are certainly no problem for anyone reading HN but calling them easy seems slightly, uhm, naive. Also, manpages are awful if all you want to do is encode easily (they also aren’t such a nice read) and their only other documentation – the examples pages – is chuck full with broken links.
  - aw3c2 16y ago
    The post I replied to sounded like a programmer's task, so cli is no problem there. There are not many important things on the manpage. Usually you would set video quality (-v) and maybe audio (-a) and that's it. Theora does not offer a gazillion switches, it is an easy codec.
    - smokinn 16y ago
      I am indeed a programmer and command line doesn't faze me. I use both ffmpeg and mencoder pretty often and I think ffmpeg2theora might've been the one that actually produced something that wasn't crashing players like mad. But even for me it took many tries to get something usable. My younger brother who's web savvy but not a programmer would not have been able to do it without coaching. My mom would've been a hopeless case. Saying that ffmpeg2theora is easy ignores the huge portion of the population who create their movie in Adobe Premiere or iMovie or whatever and click export and choose "TV" or "Youtube" or whatever format with automatic defaults and it looks good and it works. Until you get a GUI on Windows that's even better than Super (which I really like but is really scary to people who don't do much video encoding) it won't get anywhere. Handbrake is the only program I recommend to non-coders. (And my brother uses it fine.)
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        Handbrake has a horrendous UI. It just about copes if you need to rip a DVD to the best possible quality, but if you stray from that happy path it's murder. Have you tried the Miro Video Converter? It's supposed to be easy and does H.264 for iPod, Nexus 1 etc. as well as Theora at web rates: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/ http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/
        smokinn 16y ago
        No, I'd never seen that. It looks like exactly what I've wanted to recommend to people. I didn't say I was happy with recommending handbrake, it was simply the least complicated option I had seen and my brother seemed to be able to muddle through so it was just good enough. Miro looks a lot better though, thanks!
        ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        Just to correct myself slightly it appear to be (currently) using MPEG4 part 2 (Xvid) for most of its presets, though they tested H.264 encodes for certain phones. https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/ConversionMatrix https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki... I'd be interested in their reasoning for this, though I remember for a while the best quality possible on iPods regardless of time to encode was high bitrate MPEG4. I wonder how big a difference there is at these screen sizes?

by smokinn 16y ago

aw3c2 16y ago

ffmpeg2theora is easy. http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/

ugh 16y ago
Ok, command line interfaces are certainly no problem for anyone reading HN but calling them easy seems slightly, uhm, naive. Also, manpages are awful if all you want to do is encode easily (they also aren’t such a nice read) and their only other documentation – the examples pages – is chuck full with broken links.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  The post I replied to sounded like a programmer's task, so cli is no problem there. There are not many important things on the manpage. Usually you would set video quality (-v) and maybe audio (-a) and that's it. Theora does not offer a gazillion switches, it is an easy codec.
  - smokinn 16y ago
    I am indeed a programmer and command line doesn't faze me. I use both ffmpeg and mencoder pretty often and I think ffmpeg2theora might've been the one that actually produced something that wasn't crashing players like mad. But even for me it took many tries to get something usable. My younger brother who's web savvy but not a programmer would not have been able to do it without coaching. My mom would've been a hopeless case. Saying that ffmpeg2theora is easy ignores the huge portion of the population who create their movie in Adobe Premiere or iMovie or whatever and click export and choose "TV" or "Youtube" or whatever format with automatic defaults and it looks good and it works. Until you get a GUI on Windows that's even better than Super (which I really like but is really scary to people who don't do much video encoding) it won't get anywhere. Handbrake is the only program I recommend to non-coders. (And my brother uses it fine.)
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Handbrake has a horrendous UI. It just about copes if you need to rip a DVD to the best possible quality, but if you stray from that happy path it's murder. Have you tried the Miro Video Converter? It's supposed to be easy and does H.264 for iPod, Nexus 1 etc. as well as Theora at web rates: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/ http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/
      - smokinn 16y ago
        No, I'd never seen that. It looks like exactly what I've wanted to recommend to people. I didn't say I was happy with recommending handbrake, it was simply the least complicated option I had seen and my brother seemed to be able to muddle through so it was just good enough. Miro looks a lot better though, thanks!
        ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        Just to correct myself slightly it appear to be (currently) using MPEG4 part 2 (Xvid) for most of its presets, though they tested H.264 encodes for certain phones. https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/ConversionMatrix https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki... I'd be interested in their reasoning for this, though I remember for a while the best quality possible on iPods regardless of time to encode was high bitrate MPEG4. I wonder how big a difference there is at these screen sizes?