transcode2H265

FFmpeg wrapper for unattended video transcoding to H265 codec, in MKV containers.

Video

Video stream is transcoded to H265 using libx265 encoder. Video is encoded in 10 bits to preserve HDR, or to improve SDR video overall quality.

Audio

All audio streams are either transcode to AAC, using native FFmpeg aac encoder, or copied as they are, depending on the --audio-codec option. Language, and other audio metadata is preserved.

Subtitle

All internal subtitles are copied, preserving language and any other metadata. External subtitles are ignored.

Installation

As a python script you can just run the transcode2H265.py file, or put a symbolic link in any directory of your PATH (e.g. /usr/local/bin) The script needs ffmpeg installed and in your PATH to work, and if it can not find them in your system it will complain and exit. The script depends on the following Python libraries:

• sys
• os
• time
• random
• subprocess
• string
• argparse

Default use

Just do: transcode2H265.py video_file[s]

Options

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p, --preset {ultrafast,superfast,veryfast,faster,fast,medium,slow,slower,veryslow}
                        X265 preset [default: slow].
  -q, --crf CRF         CRF value [default: 26]. Determines the output video quality. Smaller values gives better qualities and bigger file sizes, bigger values result in less quality and smaller file sizes. Default value results in a nice quality/size ratio. CRF values should be in the range of 0 to 51.
  -a, --audio-codec {copy,aac}
                        Output audio codec. You may transcode all input audio streams into aac (preserving their channels), or copy the input streams as they are [default: aac].
  -b, --aac_audio_bitrate_per_channel AAC_AUDIO_BITRATE_PER_CHANNEL
                        AAC audio bitrate per channel (in kb/s) [default: 96]. Ignored if audio codec not aac. Maximum audio bitrate is determined by the audio stream with more channels.
  -x, --filename-postfix FILENAME_POSTFIX
                        Postfix to be added to newly created H.265 video files [default: _h265].
  -t, --threads THREADS
                        Indicates the number of processor cores the script will use. 0 indicates to use as many as possible, or current libx265 library defaults [default: 0]. ffmpeg may or may not respect this.
  -v, --version         Show program's version number and exit.