Batch convert videos from MPG to AVI

Question

I have a few hundred short MPEG files (each ~10 seconds) that I need to batch convert to AVI. What would be the best way to do this?

I've tried using WinFF but the quality was very subpar.

Solution 1

SUPER © (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) can do it. One of its features is multiple batch file processing by simple file drag and drop, and it's freeware.

Direct download link

Solution 2

With FFmpeg, which will not re-encode the videos in any way and therefore preserve quality:

ffmpeg -i file.mpg -c:v copy -c:a copy file.avi

In a batch file, e.g. for Linux:

while IFS= read -d $'\0' -r file ; do
  ffmpeg -i "$file" -c:v copy -c:a copy ${file%%.mpg}.avi
done < <(find . -iname '*.mpg' -print0)

In a batch file, e.g. for Windows:

for /r %%i in (*.mpg) do (
ffmpeg -i %%i -c:v copy -c:a copy %%i~n.avi
)

The last example requires the Windows build of ffmpeg.

Comments

[Julian]

what OS are you using?

[Force Flow]

WinFF uses FFMPEG. Pretty much what most other general conversion tools use. You just need to specify the setting you want.

[Moab]

They need to make downloading that software from that site a little easier, its a treasure hunt to find the link...direct download here...erightsoft.biz/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe

[Moab]

I guess I shouldn't complain about free software. :-)

[Richard]

+1 for ffmpeg. I've heard rather scary stories about Super wanting to modify files in the Windows\System32 folder so I avoid it like the plague. Plus if you want to use batch, then command line applications is the way to go.

[James]

+1 Yeh, from personal experience Super acts rather suspicious and takes an insane amount of time to load just for a winforms application. Not sure what it does in background to justify this but it doesn't do anything with videos which can't be achieved with open-source solutions IMAO

[Kamil]

I use ffmpeg too, but... I still don't understand why people who created it didn't released some productive official GUI. Many GUI programs with ffmpeg are full of adware, malware etc. I don't know which is safe to use, and which will infect my computer with SweetPacks or other crap.

[slhck]

@Kamil The developers have enough to do already, and are continuously improving the tool. Adding a GUI would be a massive overhead, and would probably require a second project of almost the same scale of FFmpeg, if it should be FOSS and cross-platform.