Drag and drop fast video transcoding

[woolypants]

Is there a free or inexpensive Mac app that offers basic and very fast video transcoding e.g. drag an old AVI file onto it and it outputs an H265 file of the same quality? I'm using a MBP M1 Max.

The candidates I've tried so far:

1. Adapter: Not Apple Silicon. Still Intel only. (Seems to be abandoned?)
2. HandBrake: Way too complicated. Just want drag and drop and same quality in=same quality out, but H265. Probably the best candidate if nothing else can be found, though.
3. Ffmpeg: Way too complicated.
4. VLC: Only does H264, and seemingly hasn't heard of Apple Toolbox (?). Only CPU transcode from what I can see.
5. Shutter Encoder: Says it's Apple Silicon but on first run requests Rosetta be installed (I keep Rosetta off my system because it eats battery life).

 

[bogdanw]

Ffmpeg: Way too complicated.

It’s not that complicated:
1. Download FFmpeg for macOS Apple Silicon from here https://www.osxexperts.net
At the moment, it’s FFmpeg511ARM.zip
https://www.osxexperts.net/FFmpeg511ARM.zip
MD5 2ed7c86ad42f5f11e49c6c5ff26120f8
SHA-1 8304877e4ec59d7d777153c5bdb9dc1aa901aa1f
SHA-256 289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753
VirusTotal link https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753

2. Unzip FFmpeg511ARM.zip and move the ffmpeg binary into /usr/local/bin/
From Terminal, just one command

sudo unzip ~/Downloads/FFmpeg511ARM.zip -d /usr/local/bin/

3. Create a new Quick Action with Automator
https://support.apple.com/guide/automator/use-quick-action-workflows-aut73234890a/mac
select Workflow receives – movie files in Finder
add Run Shell Script with the following code

for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v hevc_videotoolbox "${f%.*}_H265.mp4"
done

Save the quick action as H265 or any name you want, go to Finder, right-click on a AVI file and choose H265. Using ffmpeg, the selected video file would be converted using hevc_videotoolbox, with _H265.mp4 added at the end of the name.

 

[woolypants]

It’s not that complicated:

Thanks. I already have an almost exactly the same process setup to convert MKV to MP4, so I can play MKV files in QuickTime Player.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. Sometimes the sound isn't carried across in the transcode. Sometimes the transcode outputs a file that QuickTime can't read, for whatever reason. Recently it's been introducing a weird frame stutter, too, which I think might be a temporary bug in Ffmpeg.

 

[bogdanw]

Shutter Encoder: Says it's Apple Silicon but on first run requests Rosetta be installed (I keep Rosetta off my system because it eats battery life).

Presumably Rosetta “eats battery life” when it runs. Shutter Encoder is actually a Java app and probably that’s why it needs Rosetta.
But the ffmpeg binary included in the app (Shutter\ Encoder.app/Contents/Resources/Library/ffmpeg) is Apple Silicon native and that will be used when converting files.

 

[woolypants]

Presumably Rosetta “eats battery life” when it runs

It adds an always-running background task, too, but I'm unsure if this consumes battery power.

The main issue is that a lot more apps than you might think continue to be Intel-only, such as Safari browser extensions, or menu bar apps. These again run all the time. They're a bit insidious.

 

[bogdanw]

It adds an always-running background task, too, but I'm unsure if this consumes battery power.

The main issue is that a lot more apps than you might think continue to be Intel-only, such as Safari browser extensions, or menu bar apps. These again run all the time. They're a bit insidious.

I'll have to check on that on my M1.

Try searching the App Store, there are some free apps that might offer what you want.
Video Converter https://apps.apple.com/app/video-converter/id1518836004

 

[snomelc]

It’s not that complicated:
1. Download FFmpeg for macOS Apple Silicon from here https://www.osxexperts.net
At the moment, it’s FFmpeg511ARM.zip
https://www.osxexperts.net/FFmpeg511ARM.zip
MD5 2ed7c86ad42f5f11e49c6c5ff26120f8
SHA-1 8304877e4ec59d7d777153c5bdb9dc1aa901aa1f
SHA-256 289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753
VirusTotal link https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753

2. Unzip FFmpeg511ARM.zip and move the ffmpeg binary into /usr/local/bin/
From Terminal, just one command

sudo unzip ~/Downloads/FFmpeg511ARM.zip -d /usr/local/bin/

3. Create a new Quick Action with Automator
https://support.apple.com/guide/automator/use-quick-action-workflows-aut73234890a/mac
select Workflow receives – movie files in Finder
add Run Shell Script with the following code

for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v hevc_videotoolbox "${f%.*}_H265.mp4"
done

Save the quick action as H265 or any name you want, go to Finder, right-click on a AVI file and choose H265. Using ffmpeg, the selected video file would be converted using hevc_videotoolbox, with _H265.mp4 added at the end of the name.

View attachment 2091590

Thank you! This is what I was looking for. I successfully created the Quick Action but get a 9-page error when I run it on an MKV file. This is the last part of the error:
Stream mapping:

Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> hevc (hevc_videotoolbox))

Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (aac (native) -> aac (native))

Press [q] to stop, [?] for help

[hevc_videotoolbox @ 0x7f9527f05280] Error encoding frame: -12905

[hevc_videotoolbox @ 0x7f9527f05280] popping: -542398533

Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

[aac @ 0x7f9527f06700] Qavg: 65536.000

[aac @ 0x7f9527f06700] 2 frames left in the queue on closing

Conversion failed!”

 

[snomelc]

It’s not that complicated:
1. Download FFmpeg for macOS Apple Silicon from here https://www.osxexperts.net
At the moment, it’s FFmpeg511ARM.zip
https://www.osxexperts.net/FFmpeg511ARM.zip
MD5 2ed7c86ad42f5f11e49c6c5ff26120f8
SHA-1 8304877e4ec59d7d777153c5bdb9dc1aa901aa1f
SHA-256 289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753
VirusTotal link https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/289d2ffb60a8dbbd7c0df0ac1daac191fbe7fa02fb256b05a044018d75d10753

2. Unzip FFmpeg511ARM.zip and move the ffmpeg binary into /usr/local/bin/
From Terminal, just one command

sudo unzip ~/Downloads/FFmpeg511ARM.zip -d /usr/local/bin/

3. Create a new Quick Action with Automator
https://support.apple.com/guide/automator/use-quick-action-workflows-aut73234890a/mac
select Workflow receives – movie files in Finder
add Run Shell Script with the following code

for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v hevc_videotoolbox "${f%.*}_H265.mp4"
done

Save the quick action as H265 or any name you want, go to Finder, right-click on a AVI file and choose H265. Using ffmpeg, the selected video file would be converted using hevc_videotoolbox, with _H265.mp4 added at the end of the name.

View attachment 2091590

This script works for me:
for f in "$@"
do
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -c copy -copyts "${f%.*}.mp4"
done

Thank you so much for your help. I'm so happy that I now have the same functionality that I had in Windows. It converts the files super fast because it simply changes the container (from what I've read).