Simple transcoding tools

Intentionally simple transcoding scripts

Usage

1. Inspect your source material with inspect.py. It will print stream information that should help you decide which streams you want to keep

2. Remux your source to normalise it using remux.py. Use -a to select audio tracks, -s to select subtitle tracks, and -f for force a subtitle track, if desired.

3. Check cropping with preview-crop.py. It will open mpv with the drawbox filter to show what the detected crop is, and it will put a crop.txt file with the detected crop in the current working directory.

4. Transcode with hevc-encode.py. If crop.txt is found next to the source, it will automatically be used for crop information. Use --dry-run to see the HandBrakeCLI command. For a rough idea: it'll take the video track and transcode it to a 10-bit HEVC video using x265; it'll select the first audio track and convert it to E-AC3, at varying bitrates depending on channels. It will add all subtitles in their current format, burning the first forced track

Dependencies

Each tool has its own dependencies, I've tried to keep them as minimal as possible. Each command needs to be accessible on your $PATH

• inspect.py depends on ffprobe and mkvmerge
• remux.py depends on mkvmerge
• preview-crop.py depends on ffprobe, ffmpeg, and mpv
• hevc-encode.py depends on HandBrakeCLI, and optionally mkvpropedit

Installation

• Drop the .py files somewhere in your $PATH.
• Get HandBrakeCLI from here: https://handbrake.fr/downloads2.php, drop it in your $PATH
• Get ffmpeg and ffprobe from here: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html, drop them in your $PATH (look for static builds)
• Get mkvmerge and mkvpropedit from here: https://mkvtoolnix.download/downloads.html, drop them into your $PATH
• Get mpv from here: https://mpv.io/installation/, drop it in your $PATH