FFmpeg encoder CLI command to encode an entire directory (or GUI)

**akand074** · May 22nd, 2011

Hey,

I installed the latest FFmpeg and x264 via this thread. I'm just wondering if there was a single command possible to encode an entire directory of videos (>100 video files) all to x264 codec with MKV container (with support for multi-threaded CPUs of course). Otherwise, is there a particular GUI front-end for the ffmpeg encoder I set up that you would particularly recommend that will allow me to do that?

Thanks!

**andrew.46** · May 22nd, 2011

It can be done with a for loop. Are these files all the same type, as in all .mp4, .flv or .avi?

**akand074** · May 22nd, 2011

Originally Posted by andrew.46

It can be done with a for loop. Are these files all the same type, as in all .mp4, .flv or .avi?

Yeah, they are all in some stupid real media format, which is why I'm considering re-encoding them. Though most of them are .rmvb, a small amount are .rm, no big deal as I can just run two commands, one for each?

EDIT: Oh, and I would like the output to have the same file name as the input for each file. Not sure if that's a problem, just thought I'd mention it.

**andrew.46** · May 22nd, 2011

rmvb files used to pose a bit of a problem for FFmpeg and some may still be problematic. Perhaps try a test run of something like the following, from the directory that your files are in:

Code:

for f in *.rmvb
do 
ffmpeg -i "$f" -acodec libfaac -aq 100 -vcodec libx264 -preset slow -crf 22 -threads 0 "${f%.rmvb}.mkv"
done

The FFmpeg syntax is drawn from Fakeoutdoorsman's guide. Hopefully FFmpeg will not choke on your rmvbs but some can be difficult still...

**akand074** · May 23rd, 2011

Success. That worked! I just copied 5 files into a new directory to test it out and it worked fine, it didn't choke on the file types. I'll likely tweak with the ffmpeg settings from the default but the loop worked perfectly.