have anyone heard of an avi->mp4 convertor for linux/unix?

Question

are there any free or paid convertors that make HQ/HD MP4 out of AVI files. Ideally, i would run it in a directory with AVIs and it converts it until done )

of course it should be for unix/linux.

anyone heard of such a thing?

Answer 1

ffmpeg. For mpeg4 video you probably want to use the x264 codec.

Answer 2

ffmpeg and transcode or mencoder and vlc are available options. You will find most documentation on ffmpeg.

Answer 3

Arista is good at this. arista-transcode is the command-line version, for doing batch transcodes.

Answer 4

You can use Handbrake nightly build and you can choose a command line version and a GUI which both does batch transcodeing and outputs to MP4 using ffmpeg.

Answer 5

I use ffmpeg. One possible simple script:

for i in *avi
do ffmpeg -i $i -vcodec libx264 -sameq -whatever $i.mp4
done

The "-vcodec libx264" says to use H.264 encoding for video. The "-sameq" says that the output video should be the same quality as the original (not whatever ffmpeg defaults to).

Note that in the USA at least, encoding into H.264 without paying a license fee is a violation of patent law. I do not know what country you are writing from or what your patent law may be.

Answer 6

If you want a GUI, use WinFF or Handbrake.