Conversion¶

ffmpeg has a huge array of conversion parameters, many of which were tested to optimise this project.

x264, the default video encoder, is actually a separate library (libx264) and project, and has a very large number of configurable parameters of it's own. Refer to this ffmpeg write-up: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264 and a very detailed and useful write-up: http://www.lighterra.com/papers/videoencodingh264.

The default audio encoder chosen is ffmpeg's built-in AAC encoder, which since late 2015 is mainstream, no longer "experimental". vdr-convert will now silently upgrade to Fraunhofer's improved libfdk_aac if ffmpeg is built with it. Libmp3lame can be configured to output mp3 audio with the -a option if you prefer. libfdk_aac is REQUIRED for HE-AAC (podcasts). See options

The parameters used in this script are:

***Video***
(keep)        H264, profile: 4.0 high     CRF 21      preset medium*
(single use)  H264, profile: 4.0 high     CRF 23      preset veryfast*
-OR-
(keep)        H265, above CRF +5    preset medium*
(single use)  H265, above CRF +5    preset veryfast* 

***Audio***
(keep)        stereo: MP2/3 > AAC or MP3 # @ lesser of 10/12 existing bitrate and 150k, with floor of 100k (e.g. 192k > 150k)
(single use)  stereo: MP2/3 > AAC or MP3 # @ lesser of 10/12 existing bitrate and 120k, with floor of 100k
              AC3/5.1 > copy
              mono: > copy (e.g. AD stream)
(podcast)     stereo: MP2/3 > HE-AAC v2 @ 48k or MP3, Opus as defined in $podcastaudioprofile variable

***Subtitles***    DVB > copy

* CRF and preset are related.
If you use a faster preset, you need to reduce CRF to get similar quality, somewhat reducing any speed gain. It appears that that the stated quality is measured using the default "medium" preset, 23 being H264 standard, 18 being near perfect. In testing, using slower than "medium" or lowering the CRF below 20 or 21 did not seem to benefit the already compressed video quality of typical SD material. vdr-convert uses a default CRF of 21. On good HD material, when doing single use conversions, a CRF of 24 or more (-q 24) is often quite acceptable, but the user can set their own value as required with the -q option.

The conversion process is documented in Workflow

Conversion speed¶

In "keep" mode, a good rule of thumb for H264 is real time x number of cores for a 3.2GHz CPU on SD material.
In single-use mode, conversion speed approximately doubles.
H265 is considerably slower, but has recently improved (v2.7 in 2018). On SD material it now runs at approximately half H264 speed

Recording sizes¶

MPEG2 SD recordings are typically around 1 - 2Gb / hour for good material. Equivalent H264/AAC recordings are typically 650M - 1Gb / hour, more for grainy older films. H265 is typically 2/3 to 1/2 the size of H264, so approx 25-40% of MPEG2.
vdr-convert checks recording sizes and produces an error if the output is unreasonably small or larger than the original (e.g. very grainy film).