CME - The Console Media Encoder version 0.1.2

[panni]

Have you ever had the problem that your loved SMS didn't play your favourite anime series / TV series / movies, because of their video container format or the codecs inside?
We, "cmd" and me, experienced this problem with some files of the famous anime "Rurouni Kenshin", which were encoded with XviD video and AAC audio inside a MKV (Matroska Video) container.
Some other episodes had the MKV container with H264 video in it and OGG audio - both clearly not supported by SMS.

After searching for available applications dealing with the *.* -> AVI (MPEG4/MP3) problem, we decided to give it a try...

Now, after about 400 different media files transcoded to AVI with DivX or XviD video and LAME MP3 audio, we thought that maybe there are some other guys out there who experienced the same tricky conversion problems surrounding our todate's huge codec variety.

This is where CME comes in handy.


CME is a command line application that tries to convert the media files of ANY format, given by a filemask which supports wildcards (* and ?) such as sequences (e.g. [3-10]) for batch-converting multiple files.
Single file encoding is supported, sure.
It actually is a frontend of some other (re-)encoding applications like MEncoder, FAAD, libavcodec etc., providing simple functions for those who don't want to spend years with reading the MEncoder MAN page, or huge mailing-lists that discuss about H264 and AAC combinations.


It currently has native support for the following codecs:

Video:
"H264": ".h264",
"AVC": ".h264",
"V_MS/VFW/FOURCC": ".avi",
"V_UNCOMPRESSED": ".raw",
"V_MPEG4/ISO/": ".avi",
"V_MPEG4/MS/V3": ".divx",
"V_MPEG1": ".mpeg",
"V_MPEG2": ".mpeg",
"V_REAL": ".rm",
"V_QUICKTIME": ".mov"

Audio:
"A_PCM": ".pcm",
"A_MPC": ".mpc",
"A_AC3": ".ac3",
"A_DTS": ".dts",
"A_VORBIS": ".ogg",
"A_FLAC": ".flac",
"A_REAL": ".rm",
"A_AAC": ".aac",
"A_TTA1": ".tta",
"A_WAVPACK4": ".wv"

Packed up in the currently most known container formats (such as MKV, AVI, OGM).

Usage and installation instructions can be found in the included Documentation.



Version history:
Console Media Encoder [CME]

Version: 0.1.2
- renamed SAMC to CME
- added --mode=reencode for reencoding video&audio
- added several quality/size related optional parameters
- changed mp3 codec to mp3lame


Version: 0.1.0
- first public version


DOWNLOAD CME 0.1.2 (Windows binary, sources included)


PLEASE post your opinions, suggestions and bugs (with a high set of information about your video files (MKV: --mode=info / ELSE: --mode=extinfo)).

(Admins please feel free to sticky-up this one)

[Bootlegninja]

Sounds like a good tool. Although I'm not fond of dos and hope that a gui comes along for it.

[Z-Saber]

Sounds interesting. I might give it a try.

[panni]

Sounds like a good tool. Although I'm not fond of dos and hope that a gui comes along for it.

A GUI may be introduced in one of the next versions, after we've recieved some more comments/suggestions - although I'm not sure whether a GUI is a good idea for CME, because the FILEMASK with wildcards is way easier to use in commandline than in a GUI.

[micpet1997]

i don't mean to be rude but y can't u just use the "Direct Steam Copy" option in VirtualDub

[jerrykid]

Will future version be able to hard code subs onto the avi by pulling them from the container file or from an external source? If so is there any idea of when it would be implemented.

Thanks for the contribution of this so far though. I know I can put it to good use.

[J-SIN]

hmm will give it a try!

i don't mean to be rude but y can't u just use the "Direct Steam Copy" option in VirtualDub

sure you could do that, but there are some people who might have trouble converting MKV into AVI from VirtualDub, like for me for some reason i am not able to convert MKV into AVI as of recent. i updated and everything but somewhere it got screwed up and i cant find out why.

[panni]

i don't mean to be rude but y can't u just use the "Direct Steam Copy" option in VirtualDub

No, that does not work for any given video file - for some it may, but certain codec / container combinations can't be handled yet, by any trans/encoder I know.
Besides CME intentionally was made for quickly batch-converting a full set of video episodes (like for Kenshin which has about 95 video files), whereas not every video file was of the same format or contained the same codecs.
Even IF you could do all this (by hand) using VirtualDub or any other known frontend tool, those guys, and I think there aren't few who watch TV episodes or anime on their SMS-PS2, wouldn't want to do it manually for every single file

Will future version be able to hard code subs onto the avi by pulling them from the container file or from an external source? If so is there any idea of when it would be implemented.

Thanks for the contribution of this so far though. I know I can put it to good use.

Definitely.
As you may have noticed we are mainly using MEncoder as our primary stream encoder. It's one of the most powerful commandline encoders for linux out there, and a speciality of MEnc is to hardcode subs.
We didn't want to implement the subtitle thingies in this early version, because we couldn't know how well the app goes down.

[zabolyx]

This is such a sexy idea. I mostly DL TV seasons. lately I've notice several episodes that where different than the rest (gathered rather than released by one individual).

This is a great tool if it works. I'll give it a spin.

[jerrykid]

I've used the MEnc before and it allows the use of 'eng' or 'jpn' as the --aid. In cme it wants the actualy id number. Can the ability to use either method be added?

Also the documentation does not show an example if you want the output file in a different directory then the source directory.