VideoEncodingAutomation

Automates video encoding using HandBrakeCLI.

Usage

1. Download a release from the Releases area and extract to C:\VideoEncodingAutomation\ or another location of your choosing.
2. Put HandBrakeCLI somewhere, e.g. C:\VideoEncodingAutomation\HandbrakeCLI.exe.
3. Put ffmpeg binaries (.exe, .dll, etc) in C:\VideoEncodingAutomation\ffmpeg\. I like the full build (gpl) shared version for win64 from here.
4. Put MediaInfo CLI somewhere, e.g. C:\VideoEncodingAutomation\MediaInfo.exe.
5. Download starter encoder configurations from here. Create a folder somewhere that you have a lot of disk space, and extract the encoder configurations there. You should now have a simple directory structure, e.g.

C:\
  -> Encode
      -> in
        -> q18
        -> q20
        -> q23
        -> q23-allaudio-allsubs
        -> q23-allsubs
        -> q23-SmartCrop
        -> q23-SmartCrop-allaudio-allsubs
        -> q23-SmartCrop-allsubs
        -> q26

The way this works is you drop video files into any of these input folders (q18, q20, etc) and the VideoEncodingAutomation process will automatically transcode the video according to the settings defined in encoder.txt within the folder. Output goes in an out folder next to the in folder.

As an example, here is the encoder.txt from q23-SmartCrop.

{
  "Encoder": "handbrake",
  "VideoEncoder": "x265",
  "VideoEncoderPreset": "medium",
  "Quality": 23,
  "HandbrakeCrop": "Smart",
  "AudioTrackSelection": {
    "AllTracks": false,
    "AllTracksNoCommentary": false,
    "AllEnglish": false,
    "AllEnglishNoCommentary": false
  },
  "SubtitleTrackSelection": {
    "AllTracks": false
  },
  "LimitedRange": false,
  "StartTimeSeconds": 0,
  "DurationSeconds": 0,
  "KeepInputForDebuggingAfterward": false
}

• "Encoder": "handbrake" instructs the app to use handbrake (currently this is the only allowed value of the field)
• VideoEncoder can be "x265" or "x264" or "av1"
• VideoEncoderPreset can be any of the encoder presets defined by the codec. See HandBrakeCLI documentation.
• Quality is the constant rate factor number defined by the codec. See HandBrakeCLI documentation. For x264 and x265, the range is 0-51 (lower is better quality), and a commonly used range is 18-23. For av1, the range is 0-63 (lower is better quality) and a commonly used range is 24-28.
• HandbrakeCrop defines a value for HandbrakeCLI's --crop argument. It could be "0:0:0:0" to do no cropping, "280:280:0:0" to remove 280 rows from the top and bottom, "" to let handbrake crop automatically, or "Smart" to use my own custom cropping calculations which are especially conservative (high priority on preserving all image data, even at the cost of some black rows remaining).
• KeepInputForDebuggingAfterward is for debugging or testing purposes. If it is false, the input videos are DELETED after transcoding has completed. When using "KeepInputForDebuggingAfterward": true, it is advised to also set LimitedRange to true in order to use the "StartTimeSeconds" and "DurationSeconds" arguments in order to transcode small samples of video in relatively little time.

6. Run VideoEncodingAutomation.exe once, and then close it. Settings.cfg will be created.
7. Open Settings.cfg and configure as needed.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Settings xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <videoStorageDir>C:\Encode\</videoStorageDir>
  <handbrakePath>HandBrakeCLI.exe</handbrakePath>
  <webPort>14580</webPort>
  <mediaInfoCLIPath>MediaInfo.exe</mediaInfoCLIPath>
</Settings>

8. Run VideoEncodingAutomation.exe again. You can view the web interface via http://localhost:14580/

Notes

I haven't tried in a long time, but this application may still work on Linux via mono if you are so inclined.

Building Source

Open the .sln file with the latest Visual Studio Community Edition. You'll need to get a copy of my BPUtil library and repair the project references to this.