This sounds like excellent advice. I happen to have a licensed version of BeyondCompare that I can install and do Hex compare. I appreciate the guidelines to follow and I agree with you on the “pre-cracked” options. I would always install from the developer’s site first and then use the patch if I use it at all. Unfortunately, this software mush have a “phone-home” features and has a “hosts file” change as well. As with the previous response, I would appreciate your input on whether you would try it or not.

Wondershare Uniconverter

Thanks for your excellent advice & input!

Thank you so very much for your time and energy in putting all this together. I can’t wait to give it a try. I really appreciate all the explanation and video showing how everything’s done!

Thanks for all the information!

4K Video Downloader can download the “old” format of YT videos where a channel is strictly a particular language and put it in an MKV container with the resolution I select & an SRT subtitle using a VP9 codec & that’s fine. I just run it through my video converter and I’m good. The problem is when I try to download from one of the “new” multi-audio/sub channels. (Ugh!)

Ok, so now let me see if I can answer your questions:
Q1 - Yes, I mean a channel with multiple audio tracks but I can only access the English version although I know there’s a Japanese track there also.
Q2 - The subtitle is the one you get by selecting CC on the YT control panel. I can see it with IDM but it’s in TIML format. 4K gives me a SRT on the “old” channels.
Q3 - Yes, when I download I want a pre-merged file with the appropriate streams (Video, Japanese Audio & English Subtitles) preferably with an SRT sub.

I hope that made sense. I’ve tried Tartube a bit but like you said it will still be the problem I run into with 4K Downloader, I can’t get the original Japanese audio. I can go to YouTube 4k Downloader and enter the URL for the file and download the Japanese audio and remux the file but when you’re talking about >100 files that’s a long process.

Again, thank you for the information and explantion of the command line. I’m not very good with command line stuff but I will try it and see if I can get it work for me. Please feel free to comment back.

Phew, that worked better. No virus that time. I’ll give it a try and see if it’ll work for me. I was getting a bit nervous there for a minute. Thank you for updating your information!

My antivirus flagged it as a virus (Potential Unwanted Program). Thank goodness it caught and quarantined it.

I have a problem with 10-Bit though. When I try to encode more than 1 file in 10-Bit with the HEVC_AMF ffmpeg encoder, my CPU usage goes to 100% and stays. And with 1000s of files to do. Well, you can imagine. Ugh!

It does but I’ve found how to force a HEVC 10-bit file using ffmpegBatch. I replace the program’s version of ffmpeg with the full ffmpeg version & then use the libx265 encoder with Profile=10 & Pixel Format=yuv420p10le & I get a nice HEVC 10-Bit file everytime but there’s one small problem, I can only process one file at a time or it pushes my CPU to 100% otherwise so I’ll just need to be patient in my processing. 🙂 Thanks for your input!

I’m not working with High Def sources anyway. It’s mainly shows from the 60s-00s and older cartoons so I’m wondering if the 8-bit vs. 10-bit is really even important. I mainly just want to re-encode my library and reduce it’s “footprint”.

Can you encode H265 10bit using the amf_h265 in ffmpeg? I hope I’m using the right terminology?

Here is what the command looks like for one of my presets in ffmpeg Batch and you’re saying I need to add MORE to it? I don’t even know what half of this means…

-map 0 -c:v hevc_amf -quality balanced -rc cqp -qp_p 25 -qp_i 25 -quality balanced -rc cqp -qp_p 25 -qp_i 25 -vf “scale=640:480,crop=ih/3*4:ih” -c:a aac -b:a 128K -filter:a loudnorm

Is that H265 (10-Bit)? Also, I have to use a GUI as I don’t know how to use the command line version of ffmpeg.

I’ll give it another look but there was some reason I didn’t like Handbrake when I tried to use it. But, thanks for the response.

Can it handle multiple files @ the same time?

My Radeon 470 had Kronos Open CL but I think some of my system drivers have gone crazy because the option to use it has disappeared. I’m really considering a new build even though my system’s only 3.5 yrs old.

I see what you mean about the other CODECs like VP9 and AV1. The future looks good for them but for a Plex library not so much. I tried converting a single ~20 minute TV episode and it took about ~16mins for AOM-AV1 and VP9 was somewhat over an hour or so. But, H265 zips right along in ~5 mins or less an ep with not as much strain on the CPU. Probably be going down the H265/AAC route. Thanks for the data & information. It’s helped very much!

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So, any device that handles 4K should be able to handle H.265. Good informattion to know. Thanks for the input!

Thanks for the clarification on 264. I have an AMD 3700x with Radeon 470 graphics card. I’d like a decent balance between CPU/GPU encoding so not to put too much stress on just the CPU. I know nothing about AV1. Can Smart TVs read the AV1 or VP9 codec? I know my LG will take H.264 & H.265 but I haven’t tried the others?