Vidcoder is what i normally use, it uses handbrake as it's encoding engine but is much simpler to use.
if you have an nvidia card, in it you can use nvenc on it for massive (crazy) speed boost if you just want something done fast, and don't care that much about quality of it.
it's open source: http://vidcoder.net/
If you want quick cut, VidCoder works well.
If you want to have more fine control, mess with audio/video separately, change the format, etc, there are other things you can use.
>HandBrake - Do you have a video with a weird file format? Do you have hundreds of gigabytes of important videos? Are you a film student, creator, or hobbyist? Well, then, HandBrake is essential for you. It's a video-file converter, compressor, and encoder. Free too.
I would offer vidcoder, it's open source, and massively more easy to use than handbrake. Does not have all the features of handbrake, but for converting videos to another format. its amazingly easy and good.
http://vidcoder.net/ open source and uses hand brake as it's source. (seems like a finished product is still under active development, the creator answers emails personally, for the couple of bugs i found)
it does not replace what handbrake does, more of a video converter with simpler interface. (handbrake can be overwhelming)
honorable mention.
one of those rare programs that supports doing media encoding, using your graphics card, yes supports nvidia cards.
its pretty awesome when you see it trans coding video at 400 FPS using your graphics card.
https://www.xmedia-recode.de/hilfe/xmediarecode.html
i dont know of any other free one that does this for free? worth noting for it. (nvenc is the encoder you want on the program, if you want to test your nvidia card)
quality does take a hit, but sometimes its worth it, compressing a 10 gig video file in a minute so you can take it with you.
also, no idea what year this site is from, its fine.
I'm not sure about all the legal ramifications, but purely on an "It works fine" level, I'm using MakeMKV to dump encrypted DVD and BluRay content, and then I use Vidcoder to encode content to h.264. I like deinterlacing and cropping video content as I encode it to get what are in my mind "nicer" videos than the originals. If you use the right combination of settings you can get visually transparent results which usually end up being 5 to 10 times smaller than the original source material. I usually leave the audio tracks in their original AC3 or DTS formats, as I have a couple of AV receivers which can decode such content, as well as open source free software (Kodi & VLC) to play back such content.
I use the .mkv container format, as it allows for an arbitrary number of nicely labeled / tagged video, audio, and subtitle streams, and does chapter points, too!
Evidently breaking encryption is a legally unresolved issue in the USA, but generally if you're doing this for personal use only and not distributing content or selling bootlegs, you are unlikely to get on the radar of law enforcement. Hopefully at some point in the future the DMCA will be updated / fixed to better match reality in 2016...
>Unfortunately I have an old version of Adobe Premiere Pro (used to sync video and audio back together). So it only uses h264 encoding. The size would be much smaller if my Adobe offered h265 instead.
Check out Handbrake. It's free and works well.
There's also another program for re-encoding that works well and is a little more user friendly, ~~but I'm blanking on the name. I'll have to check my computer when I get a chance, if you're interested.~~ that uses the Handbrake encoder engine that I also like, called VidCoder.
I noticed from my experimenting that TooazLab's Video Enhance AI doesn't use a very efficient x264 encoding setting (e.g., no B-frames). Not sure why, but you should be able to re-encode with a more efficient (but slower) x264 profile and still get better compression. (x265 will produce a much better result, of course, but it takes a lot longer.)
Thanks for this. Before I saw your reply I tried some tests myself. I use software called VidCoder. It's based on handbrake. I was cool to see the h265 worked at the same resolution. I use the quicksync setting because I have Intel and that speeds things up a ton.
There are a bunch of different encoding utilities out there, including many fine free options.
Lots of people like Handbrake. I found that it's UI isn't as nice (IMO) as another application I use on Windows called Vidcoder, which is based off of Handbrake. It is 100% free and can be used on video files, not just BluRay or DVDs. I actually use MakeMKV to rip unencoded files from my optical media, then run the results through Vidcoder. Vidcoder does allow you to set up presets and queue multiple files / folders at a time, which is nice if you're ripping TV shows, I'd imagine would also come in handy for you since you can then batch out a bunch of movies you want to convert.
The other-other way to go on something like this would be to use something like Plex, which has a media server package that can do on-demand transcoding. However, that's a whole other animal than simple, "I have files in Format A and I want them in Format B".