Batch convert files

[ubershinys]

It would be awesome to be able to add a whole folder of files to the queue at once with the same preset and then be able to merge all the clips into one long clip.

[rhester]

It would be even more awesome if new forum members took the time to do a forum search before posting so they would know how many times this has already been discussed and why it is not practical or reasonably achievable right now.

Rodney

[TedJ]

...and it would be TOTALLY awesome if we could fire people who fail to do this out of a cannon.

One can dream...

[SnorreSelmer]

And if the OP is using Linux or OSX he/she can look at this thread for a few nice batch-scripts for the command-line version of HandBrake. (I personally recommend the script written by me, as a nice and feature-rich batch-script.)

[mkr10001]

I just did a search and didn't find anything.

Will someone either please link me or enlighten me as to why it's not practical ?

[phileuro]

I agree - to fob off newb's and then to say its not practical...
VisualHub seems to have no issues doing it!

[s55]

Better batch encoding may appear some day, but is not a priority right now. Maybe when a number of other things fall into place (e.g decomb3) it's something that *may* be looked at again.

Fwiw, Visual Hub is a very poor batch encode implementation. It's far too easy to screw up an entire batch of encode jobs.

[jamiemlaw]

Considering that for batch encoding you apply the same settings to all videos, you might as well create a preset and use that. Then, it's only two clicks per video: one to select it from the Title menu, another to add it to the queue. It's not that hard, and it doesn't take long (under two seconds per video).

There are higher priorities, given this perfectly feasible workaround.

[phileuro]

ok... I understand.

We have 700 individual video files to convert to work for ipad.... so thats only 1400 clicks versus a single drag and drop. And, maybe Visual Hubs implementation is flawed... but I've never had a problem with it.

Anyway - no worries, we will use VH for this. I know that not many people may need this, so I can understand it being far down the list.

[mcmusic]

phileuro

If you have access to a windows machine for a batch process - try http://videoscripts.wordpress.com/2010/ ... batch-gui/

[gloriawaria]

Some commentary from a Los Angeles Producer:

I work every day in production in the entertainment industry. We obviously deal with a LOT of video. I just downloaded the new HB to try it out and was disappointed when it didn't offer batch processing. I then went to this forum for the first time to see if there were any comments and found this thread. And this is how I feel:

1) The nasty comments are not necessary. They don't help ANYONE, and just so you are actually made aware, if you type into Google "Handbrake batch," this is the first page you come to. So stop ripping on "newbs" and making other comments, when the entire WORLD is referred to this page first.

2) At this point, while HB is a great piece of software, not having a batch function is a serious lack of customer service, paying attention to what your users want and creating something that actually HELPS people not frustrates them. I have huge folders of clips, often in the hundreds or more and I'm NOT going to sit there and click thousands of times and WORSE, waste so much time doing so when I can get that result with other programs that do batch process.

Honestly, just put the batch function in already, even if it's buggy, or make it an optional add-on, whatever it is you want to do, but you are seriously deterring progress over some ridiculous argument over "practicality" and an obvious elementary-level ego battle. Let it go, grow up, and start helping people who LOVE your software. I would PAY for this app if it had batch processing.

Please.

Gloria

[TedJ]

Ahem... customer service? I was not aware that you had purchased anything. Let's assume that we disregarded all our current arguments against batch encoding and implemented it in the fashion you wanted. In the (quite likely) event that a batch falls over and you waste days or even weeks making faulty encodes, would you sue us?

Handbrake is a community project, developed by a small number of volunteers and no amount of badgering or wheedling is going to change this fact. If you are serious in your claims of being willing to pay for batch support, hire a programmer to implement it for you... all the code is freely available under the GPL.

[mduell]

Given the limited number of users who have hundreds of homogenous sources, and you can do batch processing with a 3 line shell script if you do, I'm not surprised by the lack of developer interest.

[Dalton63841]

Given the limited number of users who have hundreds of homogenous sources, and you can do batch processing with a 3 line shell script if you do, I'm not surprised by the lack of developer interest.

Exactly. I have over 3000 videos, several folders deep. Took 15 minutes to find batch convert scripts for windows and for Mac, and in fact right at this minute I have 2 PC's and 2 Mac's all working on my vids simultaneously. What would have taken more than 2 months will be done in under 3 weeks now.

btw Thanks to this community! Made my life easier.

[kamil]

Given the limited number of users who have hundreds of homogenous sources, and you can do batch processing with a 3 line shell script if you do, I'm not surprised by the lack of developer interest.

Exactly. I have over 3000 videos, several folders deep. Took 15 minutes to find batch convert scripts for windows and for Mac, and in fact right at this minute I have 2 PC's and 2 Mac's all working on my vids simultaneously. What would have taken more than 2 months will be done in under 3 weeks now.

btw Thanks to this community! Made my life easier.

Not everyone is savvy enough to understand CLI or has the time to learn it. A simple GUI input box with a list of videos to be outputted would solve it, nicely. More impressive would have been the ability to merge the converted files after.

Like gloriawaria said, I would pay for this feature set as well. In response to someone else suggesting we hire a developer and have them program batch processing, that is obviously a facetious remark that adds no value to the conversation.

[TedJ]

Like gloriawaria said, I would pay for this feature set as well. In response to someone else suggesting we hire a developer and have them program batch processing, that is obviously a facetious remark that adds no value to the conversation.

How is this being facetious? To my mind it is a serious and perfectly valid solution to the issue at hand, and certainly not without precedent within the OSS community. I'll wager that's it's more likely to provide an outcome that you're happy with than browbeating the developers into adding a feature of little use or interest to them, or the majority of the HandBrake user community.

Are you perhaps suggesting that your time is more valuable than theirs?

[kamil]

Like gloriawaria said, I would pay for this feature set as well. In response to someone else suggesting we hire a developer and have them program batch processing, that is obviously a facetious remark that adds no value to the conversation.

How is this being facetious? To my mind it is a serious and perfectly valid solution to the issue at hand, and certainly not without precedent within the OSS community. I'll wager that's it's more likely to provide an outcome that you're happy with than browbeating the developers into adding a feature of little use or interest to them, or the majority of the HandBrake user community.

Are you perhaps suggesting that your time is more valuable than theirs?

Again, with the snide attitude.

I'm not implying anything over what is valuable, more or less in comparison to anyone else.

And it is being facetious. You know perfectly well that no rational individual even with money to burn is going to hire a developer to make an application like Handbrake only to have batch processing when there are already existing alternatives that do this? What is the purpose of making such a suggestion?? You do know the costs for application development, right? I agree with gloria and you can bet on it that batch processing WILL be used by many users of handbrake, members of this forum or not. It wouldnt come up as a result in google search engine if it weren't such a desired function, that alone should tell you that Handbrake is lacking it. I've got about 200 movies I need to batch convert AND merge and another 50-100 from home recorded movies via DV Converter. I want all of them to be used with the same settings for consistency across all platforms the movies will be played on (mac, pc, quicktime, vlc, boxee box, tablets, phones and WDTV).

Going back to the whole hiring someone fact, you would have made a better argument had you pointed out for a group effort to pull off this feature. You've already had gloria express her willingness to pay for handbrake, and I have stated it as well if it were implemented. The sensible thing would have been to consider the suggestion rather than downplay it, which is why I said its a facetious remark. You know no one is going to hire a developer JUST for that function.

As a realistic approach, I do believe iffmpeg offers batch processing as well as merging files AND at a price. I haven't bothered to use it since I have After Effects and know my way around it for batch processing and merging.

In either case, the simple idea of batch processing and merging is long overdue, much like a secondary click was with apple mouses. I don't see why this request has to get responses like '...and it would be TOTALLY awesome if we could fire people who fail to do this out of a cannon.' which again, you made.

Puzzling.

[Smithcraft]

If you have 200 files you want converted and you want to use the same preset on each one, Handbrake already has support for doing this.

SC

[mduell]

Not everyone is savvy enough to understand CLI or has the time to learn it.

Not everyone has the time for video encoding. Some people choose to make time.

[RonJohn]

Like gloriawaria said, I would pay for this feature set as well. In response to someone else suggesting we hire a developer and have them program batch processing, that is obviously a facetious remark that adds no value to the conversation.

What OS? I can quickly whip up a wrapper script for Linux and Mac and more slowly whip up a PowerShell script for Windows.

[Havor]

I have to agree, even do i like HB a lot, the missing of a batch option is just a little silly.

I got last week all episodes of Stargate-SG1 from Amazon, and ripped the hole series, what is legal in Holland as your aloud to make a home copy, but if ripping 54 DVDs is not tedious enough adding 214 video files the same way to HB is just mind numbing.

Reading some of the remarks here, i wonder then, why, if a script is so easy to make, is it so hard to implement in HB?

HandBrake will offer batch encoding of that type on the day it can ensure that hundreds of video files all get cropped, filtered, scaled, and encoded properly using exactly the same settings. Understand that your situation, where you know all the videos are the same kind and can be treated similarly, is an edge case.

And if its not stable in some cases, because of mixed files or so, that is a user problem, just have a popup ware you warn for it if people do a batch selection, rather click that one, once away, then:

1. Click Source
2. Click Video file
3. Look for the next file (the most irritating part)
4. Select file
5. Add to Queue
6. Repeat step one to five 213 times.

/Offtopic
I get it, as former moderator at MediaPortal, i get that you sometimes wane get snappy at people that ask silly questions, but it just dose not help at all.

What i did was, i just look up a post with the search function my self, that had the same question, link to it, warn the poster that he should use some of his own initiative and use the search function first if he has a question, and close the thread.

This had to benefits, first it educates your new forum users how to behave, second it keeps the answers in one place.

As to the snappy remarks about the question for a batch function, i think its a valid question for something that would enhance HB, and remarks like, just hire some one if you wane pay for it, or code it your self if you want it, is just uncalled for.

And some projects have a bonus system, ware end users can pay money in a pot, for a bonus, for the developer that implement the function the right way they want, PayPal is excellent for that.

Edit:
I looked at how many times this function is requested, and how many views they totally had, with +65.000 views for the topics that i could easily find, it is the most wanted request i could find on the first 10 pages sorted by ''Views''.

Just give the users the option, and every time people use it, popup a ''disclaimer'', with a ''Ignore'' and ''Abort'' button, and text saying that it is a unsupported function, and not working video files are the sole concern of the users of the function.

''I think'', that people that re-encode home movies, series, and all other files of the same sort, i rather have a function that sometimes is not working proper, then mind numbing repeating something over and over and over again, that i know of that it could be done in one go!

Pretty sure i am not the only one that thinks that, so lets see what users think.

[Redacted by moderator]

[Deleted User 11865]

We don't need polls. We do listen to feature requests, but if we have no interest in implementing a feature, no amount of lobbying and/or whining (or polls) will make us change our mind.

We've made some progress in terms of batch support already (just use the forum search) - it'll improve over time, but it's not a high-priority feature and thus it'll take a long time.