Looking for Transcoding video server.

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Firewrath
Posts: 321
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm

Looking for Transcoding video server.

#1 Post by Firewrath »

Ok, so, ive talked about a touchpad ive messed with like twice on here, (love the thing<3)

Anyways, it only plays like .mp4 video files, ...plus idk, some HD ones, eh, (.h264 or something,...)
but i have like 28gig of .flv files downloaded mostly from youtube, (Yay Robotech!)
last time i tried to convert some of these, they came out to like 5 times their normal size,
so from 115megs to 570megs,
i really dont have room for 140gig of converted videos,

So is theres a decent and semi-portable sever that i can host the vids on that will stream them in mp4?
and no, VLC wont work, not that im all that great at setting it up, but the touchpad wont open the RTP or whatever address, plus, id like to be able to pick what file i want to watch from the touchpad and not the playlist that i have to setup ahead of time in VLC,yes, im picky and kind of down on VLC, :P

also, id rather not have to signup for something like Zumocast when i just want to play the files over LAN, >.<

So if anyone knows of such a thing, id appreciate it if youd let me know, ^-^

Ruby
Posts: 324
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:35 pm

Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#2 Post by Ruby »

Firewrath wrote:Ok, so, ive talked about a touchpad ive messed with like twice on here, (love the thing<3)

Anyways, it only plays like .mp4 video files, ...plus idk, some HD ones, eh, (.h264 or something,...)
but i have like 28gig of .flv files downloaded mostly from youtube, (Yay Robotech!)
last time i tried to convert some of these, they came out to like 5 times their normal size,
so from 115megs to 570megs,
i really dont have room for 140gig of converted videos,

So is theres a decent and semi-portable sever that i can host the vids on that will stream them in mp4?
and no, VLC wont work, not that im all that great at setting it up, but the touchpad wont open the RTP or whatever address, plus, id like to be able to pick what file i want to watch from the touchpad and not the playlist that i have to setup ahead of time in VLC,yes, im picky and kind of down on VLC, :P

also, id rather not have to signup for something like Zumocast when i just want to play the files over LAN, >.<

So if anyone knows of such a thing, id appreciate it if youd let me know, ^-^
I'm not sure if this will help you, but depending on when you started your YT video collection, chances are they're already in MP4 format.
Here's a quote from Wikipedia's YouTube page:
In November 2008, 720p HD support was added. At the time of the 720p launch, the YouTube player was changed from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a widescreen 16:9.[55] With this new feature, YouTube began a switchover to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC as its default video compression format.
If this is the case then they wouldn't need converting but just a re-muxing of container format, i.e. flv > mp4.

You can use FFmpeg with a simple batch file containg the following code:

Code: Select all

for %%A in ("*.flv") do ffmpeg -i %%A -vcodec copy -acodec copy %%~nA.mp4
Copy/Paste into a file with a .bat extension and place in the same folder as your videos.

The above command might not work with some of the older (Sorenson H.263), in which case you might actually need to convert:

Code: Select all

for %%A in ("*.flv") do ffmpeg -i %%A -sameq -acodec copy %%~nA.mp4
This will convert any format .flv to mp4

If your handy with batch scripting you can use the FOR command /F (file-set) with tokens to probe the file using MediaInfo (command line [MediaInfo --Inform=Video;%Format% FileName]) to grab the video format and a conditional (IF) to call a label (:) in the batch with one of the above commands.

Both FFmpeg and MediaInfo have embedded help text

FFmpeg: http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
MediaInfo: http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download/Windows - CLI version

I suspect most, if not all of your videos are already in an mp4 format and won't need converting and will retain the exact same quality as the original and with roughly the same size.

It only takes mere seconds to re-mux a video using FFmpeg.

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Firewrath
Posts: 321
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm

Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#3 Post by Firewrath »

Wow, Awesome, did not think itd be that easy.
Thanks ^-^
This would be just as good as a streaming server because i can then just use HFS to host the folder and watch them,
At best everything i have is like a year old, so they should be in the new format,

...But ;)

Any idea how to make it like spaces in the file name?
IE:
FFMPEG wrote: C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\ffmpeg\bin>ffmpeg -i EP-01 Boobytrap_(48
0p).flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy EP-01 Boobytrap_(480p).mp4
ffmpeg version N-31706-g335bbe4, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jul 31 2011 18:52:06 with gcc 4.6.1
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-memalign-hack --enable-
runtime-cpudetect --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-frei0r --enable-libo
pencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --
enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger
--enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enabl
e-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib
libavutil 51. 11. 1 / 51. 11. 1
libavcodec 53. 9. 0 / 53. 9. 0
libavformat 53. 6. 0 / 53. 6. 0
libavdevice 53. 2. 0 / 53. 2. 0
libavfilter 2. 27. 5 / 2. 27. 5
libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
EP-01: No such file or directory
if i rename the vid from 'EP-01 Boobytrap_(480p)' to 'Test' it works just fine,
and i tried putting it quotations like so: "%%~nA.mp4" and even ("%%~nA.mp4") but that didnt work,
(i figure its the '%%~nA.mp4' bit thats the problem,....)



EDIT:
And the using the renamed/converted 'Test.mp4' vid, it worked just fine on the Touchpad via HFS,
so if i can do something about getting the name spacing to work, i'll be good, ^-^
(and like 90% of the vids have spaces in their names, :P)

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m^(2)
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Location: Kce,PL
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Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#4 Post by m^(2) »

Replace %%~nA with "%%~nA" and %%A with "%%A"
Please note that you're going to loose some video quality during transcoding.

Ruby
Posts: 324
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:35 pm

Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#5 Post by Ruby »

Firewrath wrote:Wow, Awesome, did not think itd be that easy.
Thanks ^-^
This would be just as good as a streaming server because i can then just use HFS to host the folder and watch them,
At best everything i have is like a year old, so they should be in the new format,

...But ;)

Any idea how to make it like spaces in the file name?
IE:
FFMPEG wrote: C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\ffmpeg\bin>ffmpeg -i EP-01 Boobytrap_(48
0p).flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy EP-01 Boobytrap_(480p).mp4
ffmpeg version N-31706-g335bbe4, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jul 31 2011 18:52:06 with gcc 4.6.1
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-memalign-hack --enable-
runtime-cpudetect --enable-avisynth --enable-bzlib --enable-frei0r --enable-libo
pencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libfreetype --enable-libgsm --
enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-librtmp --enable-libschroedinger
--enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enabl
e-libx264 --enable-libxavs --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib
libavutil 51. 11. 1 / 51. 11. 1
libavcodec 53. 9. 0 / 53. 9. 0
libavformat 53. 6. 0 / 53. 6. 0
libavdevice 53. 2. 0 / 53. 2. 0
libavfilter 2. 27. 5 / 2. 27. 5
libswscale 2. 0. 0 / 2. 0. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
EP-01: No such file or directory
if i rename the vid from 'EP-01 Boobytrap_(480p)' to 'Test' it works just fine,
and i tried putting it quotations like so: "%%~nA.mp4" and even ("%%~nA.mp4") but that didnt work,
(i figure its the '%%~nA.mp4' bit thats the problem,....)



EDIT:
And the using the renamed/converted 'Test.mp4' vid, it worked just fine on the Touchpad via HFS,
so if i can do something about getting the name spacing to work, i'll be good, ^-^
(and like 90% of the vids have spaces in their names, :P)
Sorry, I was working with a drag/drop script where you can only have quotes around the final file, i.e. "%%~nA.mp4"

This is the correct command:

Code: Select all

for %%A in ("*.flv") do ffmpeg -i "%%A" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "%%~nA.mp4"
@m^(2) - He's not transcoding he's remuxing, so there's no quality loss.

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m^(2)
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Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 2:38 am
Location: Kce,PL
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Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#6 Post by m^(2) »

Read too quickly, sorry for misleading.

User avatar
Firewrath
Posts: 321
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm

Re: Looking for Transcoding video server.

#7 Post by Firewrath »

Just want to reply real quick here.
Ruby, Thanks.
that did the trick and converted all of the vids without any issues,
(other then some annoyance with subfolders, but no issues with the videos themselves, ;))

So i can stream them with HFS and have no need for a media server.

m^(2), thanks for your help there too, i totally spaced and missed the quotes for the '%%A'

...Now i just have to find a cheap/good wifi router, >.>

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