What’s the best and quickest way to convert image sequences to mp4 (using h264 codec) without using Quicktime? Preferably using the command line (windows)
Do you have any scripts or automatisms set up for that?
kmacphail
from Arlington, United States of America
Ffmpeg may be an option for you. It supports h264 (when built appropriately), runs on the command line and has builds for most platforms including Windows.
To get you started there are recent Windows binaries available here and h264 presets available here. I don’t encode much to h264 and normally use Linux, but you may find this huge thread on the Ubuntu forums explains usage.
Some tips that may save you time: argument order is important, not all supported formats are supported equally (jpeg source frames don’t work well for me but pngs and other formats do), ffmpeg will fail if source image sequences do not start on frames 1-5.
Other command line tools that may also work for you are ffmbc and libav (ffmpeg forks) and melt (part of the Media Lovin' Toolkit).
-Kevin
NN comments
henningkrol
-
Thank you, the ideal solution would work with jpegs. Also with frame numbers starting arbitrarily.
kmacphail
-
Well, I didn’t say jpegs don’t work, they don’t work well for me. You really need to try with your media and see what the results are. Arbitrary frames will likely be supported in the not too distant future, I’ve seen a nearly complete patch on the ffmpeg mailing list. For work I maintain my own build to which I’ve added simple support for arbitrary start frames as well as explicit start and end frames.
That’s a good question, I usually do it by using QuickTime or exporting the sequence from AE as mp4(h264) movie.