Video: Automation of Rendering/Encoding Video, whats the best free tool to use?

Question

I record a ton of stuff on my iPod Touch, it encodes 50 minute videos (max recording time) in massive 4 gig file. I've got a ton of these videos on my Desktop Windows 7 PC (Dell Optiplex GX 620, with Dual 2.8 P4 and 3 gb ram, w/ 1TB hd). Between all my other media I have room for about 100-150 additional videos.

I've tried using hand brake to encode/render the video into smaller .Mov or .Mv4 files of around 1 gig, but the problem is that it creates defects in the video or audio, such as noise, dramatic loss of color etc...

These are big problems. Any suggestions for a free/open source solution to converting to a smaller size while retaining quality?

Answer 1

A shell script driving mencoder or ffmpeg could do it, or for bigger tasks you could use a Avidemux script.