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!