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#1 2009-12-19 09:27:15

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Hey guys, I have built up a fairly large video collection of movies and tv shows (~300) over the years, and they are all encoded in xvid. What I would like to do is convert them to h.264. It would be VERY tedious to go through and convert them all manually. I have searched everywhere I can think of for a solution, but haven't found one. If any of you guys have a solution, that would be great. Thanks in advance.


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#2 2009-12-19 09:43:27

PirateJonno
Forum Fellow
From: New Zealand
Registered: 2009-04-13
Posts: 372

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

um.. use find and ffmpeg? rough example:

find /path/to/videos -type f -name '*.avi' -exec ffmpeg "{}" "{}.mp4" OPTIONS \;

look up their manpages to figure out the appropriate options


"You can watch for your administrator to install the latest kernel with watch uname -r" - From the watch man page

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#3 2009-12-19 09:46:19

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Thanks, it seems to be exactly what I am looking for.


HP Mini 311 - Arch Linux i686
AMD Phenom II X4/4GB DDR3 1600/ATI 4870 1GB - Arch Linux x64

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#4 2009-12-19 09:50:18

Procyon
Member
Registered: 2008-05-07
Posts: 1,819

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

For viewing on a mobile device?

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#5 2009-12-19 09:52:37

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Mostly for VDPAU decoding.


HP Mini 311 - Arch Linux i686
AMD Phenom II X4/4GB DDR3 1600/ATI 4870 1GB - Arch Linux x64

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#6 2009-12-19 11:27:17

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Xvid is already lossy, and converting the videos again would bring a further quality loss, so I wouldn't do what you want to do. Further, Xvid is already perfectly decodable by today's CPUs without much fuss, so I don't see the sense in degrading the quality of your videos by re-encoding them. But if you really, really want VDPAU, check the Nvidia VDPAU documentation for Feature Set C, it's a list of nvidia cards capable of decoding Xvid.

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#7 2009-12-19 21:24:15

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Alright, thanks for the input. Like I stated above, one of the reasons that I wanted h264 was because of vdpau. The other reason is that it looks like h264 is replacing xvid as the standard video codec, and I want my video collection to be current.


HP Mini 311 - Arch Linux i686
AMD Phenom II X4/4GB DDR3 1600/ATI 4870 1GB - Arch Linux x64

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#8 2009-12-20 02:34:19

skottish
Forum Fellow
From: Here
Registered: 2006-06-16
Posts: 7,942

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

There's a VDPAU driver specifically for DivX/Xvid in Mplayer called ffodivxvdpau now. You'll need a newer Mplayer revision than the one in the repos to use it.

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#9 2009-12-20 07:00:27

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Wow, very cool. I will definitely give this a try later.


HP Mini 311 - Arch Linux i686
AMD Phenom II X4/4GB DDR3 1600/ATI 4870 1GB - Arch Linux x64

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#10 2009-12-20 10:56:13

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

skottish wrote:

There's a VDPAU driver specifically for DivX/Xvid in Mplayer called ffodivxvdpau now. You'll need a newer Mplayer revision than the one in the repos to use it.

Yeah, but you need a specific graphic card. As I said, they are listed under "Feature Set C" in Nvidia's VDPAU documentation. Other graphic cards cannot handle Xvid. But every CPU since like forever can, so unless one is just shopping for a new graphic card, I don't see any big need for hardware decoding of Xvid.

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#11 2009-12-20 11:05:16

ijanos
Member
From: Budapest, Hungary
Registered: 2008-03-30
Posts: 443

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

nbyers wrote:

Alright, thanks for the input. Like I stated above, one of the reasons that I wanted h264 was because of vdpau. The other reason is that it looks like h264 is replacing xvid as the standard video codec, and I want my video collection to be current.

Then its still not recommended to convert. As stated before, you will lose quality.

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#12 2009-12-20 19:09:14

nbyers
Member
From: Washington
Registered: 2009-04-18
Posts: 19

Re: Convert massive video library from Xvid to H.264?

Alright, thanks for all the input guys.


HP Mini 311 - Arch Linux i686
AMD Phenom II X4/4GB DDR3 1600/ATI 4870 1GB - Arch Linux x64

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