EncodeHD 1.2.206.0 Released
I initially planned to just add support for a few new hardware models, but then I kinda got caught up in some audio issues that I really wanted to resolve. I then discovered that stream copying is now working in FFmpeg for H.264 video, so I’ve enabled this. Basically, if you’ve got, say, a 720p MKV and you output to a device that supports 720p or higher, the video stream is just remuxed into the new file instead of having to be re-encoded. This gives HUGE performance gains. In one sample file I use, converting for use on the X360 is down from 6 minutes to around 15 seconds!
The major underlying change to note is that since the ‘libfaac’ audio encoder is no longer considered to be GPL compliant, that meant either using the new experimental AAC encoder in FFmpeg which has some fairly huge quality issues right now, or keeping EncodeHD GPL compliant and letting people download the libfaac library separately. I’ve opted to go this route. So before you try to run EncodeHD, please ensure that you have downloaded the library from here under the ‘faac encoder’ section, and place the files in the EncodeHD folder. Otherwise you’ll get an error when EncodeHD starts.
Here’s the full changelog:
- NEW: Support for Apple iPhone 4 & iPad
- NEW: Support for HTC EVO 4G
- NEW: H.264 video stream copying when specific device adjustments (resolution / bitrate) are not required, giving dramatic performance improvements (no need to re-encode)
- CHANGE: Switched to Gianluigi Tiesi’s FFmpeg builds to avail of dynamic loading of libfaac (r23591). This is an additional component that is not GPL compliant and needs to be downloaded separately from here under the ‘faac encoder’ section
- CHANGE: No longer try to force 2 channel audio from 5.1 audio streams. FFmpeg generally fails. Instead, try 5.1 AAC and let the device downmix
- CHANGE: Increased maximum audio bitrates for AppleTV, PS3, X360 and WDTV to 320kbps
- CHANGE: Updated MediaInfo to 0.7.33
- CHANGE: Updated MP4Box to 0.4.6 Dev 12/06/2010
Download available in the Media Tools > EncodeHD section.
Enjoy!
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Nice software – got it running great…using everything on your site, I have run into a problem. When taking an avi file that contains AC3 6 channel 48khz audio.. In the advanced function i try to force ffmpeg to go into 2 channel stereo – since mp4 6 channels will not work on my xbox 360. Everytime i use the -ac 2 command it still produces a 6 channel audio file. Any suggestions…keep up the good work!
I suspected this would come up at some point. Okay so FFmpeg can’t downmix AC3 6-channel to 2-channel AAC. I’m nearly positive it used to be able to, but no more it seems. So I took an executive decision to not downmix and instead, output to 6-channel AAC. I was pretty sure that most devices would just downmix this to 2-channel itself but obviously not the X360. So I don’t really have a solution to this I’m afraid. I’d have rip the audio from the original file, re-encode it separately and mux it into the video container. This would pretty drastically change how EncodeHD works and something I’m not prepared to put the time or effort into – I’m not really actively developing EncHD anymore, hence making the source code available.
If someone else wants to take a stab at this, I’m quite happy for them to do this.
Dan
Thanks for the reply – I did get a semi-quasi solution working – Using the FFmpeg command line codes I used -ac 2 -ab 192 output_audio.mp4 or something like that i found from the internets….it did work, but i now have two file’s and the later mp4 output file went into my encodehd folder. Assuming no one is actively developing your product anymore, I figure i’ll just have to rely on this work around. Maybe some short FFMPEg command lines for certain situations would be nice – or some documentation for using other encoding engines. I actually stumbled on this software when trying to help some friends get their zune’s working and since they dont have the supercomputer i have, I needed to get them something that would process quick and easy. It works great, I simply encode my files in WMVHD using other software with 5.1 Audio…But again I do thank you for the product you’ve made!!
Thanks,
Steel
does EncodeHD offer MKV to WMV or just the Encode360?
Also on EncodeHD if i have a 720p MKV file, is it necessary to check the H.264 encoding box.. What does that box exactly do? Thanks again.
Thanks again!
Have you enabled H.264 mode? This should make the file size much smaller than standard MPEG4 files. Also, the iPhone 4 has a much higher resolution screen than previous iPhones and so I’m taking advantage of that. If you want to have lower quality video which is still iPhone 4 compatible, I’d just choose the standard iPhone preset.
Cheers, Dan
Thanks for responding so quickly – I’ll double check about enabling H.264 mode (I’m not in front of my home computer right now). The higher resolution is nice – but my videos are not hi-res – since they’re not HD videos…only SD unfortunately…so, I’m not too worried about the highest resolution :-)
Thanks again
Sharon