FFMPEG Video Compressor

Cross-platform batch wrapper for FFmpeg hardware-accelerated video encoding.

• Efficient H.264 video processing with an optimised quality-to-size ratio using two-process encoding.
• First pass with HEVC (H.265) for high quality and efficiency, then downgrade to H.264 for wider hardware support. (Without this first pass, the final H.264 outputs a larger file.)
• H.264 and GIF always use a two-stage process; HEVC/H.265 is a single-stage process.
• Supports NVIDIA NVENC, AMD AMF and Intel QSV hardware encoders on Windows and Linux.
• If the selected hardware encoder is unavailable, the script automatically falls back to CPU encoding (libx264 / libx265) and prints the reason.
• GIF encoding produces three palette-optimised variants: Bayer, Sierra2_4a and Sierra3.
• Intended for archival purposes, not live streaming.

Requirements

• FFmpeg 7.1 or newer with the appropriate hardware encoder enabled:
  • NVIDIA: h264_nvenc, hevc_nvenc
  • AMD: h264_amf, hevc_amf (Windows: DX11 / Linux: Vulkan)
  • Intel: h264_qsv, hevc_qsv
• On Linux, static builds (e.g. johnvansickle.com) usually do not include NVENC/AMF/QSV. Use your distribution's ffmpeg package for hardware acceleration.
• Windows 10/11 for Encode.bat, or a Linux/macOS shell for encode.sh.
• Input videos placed in the Input/ folder. Output is written to Output/ while preserving the subdirectory structure.

Files

File	Purpose
Encode.bat	Windows orchestrator
encode.sh	Linux / macOS orchestrator
lib/encode_nvidia.bat	Windows NVIDIA H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_amd.bat	Windows AMD H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_intel.bat	Windows Intel H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_cpu.bat	Windows CPU fallback H.264/H.265 sub-script
lib/encode_gif.bat	Windows GIF encoding sub-script (hardware or CPU first pass)
lib/encode_nvidia.sh	Linux NVIDIA H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_amd.sh	Linux AMD H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_intel.sh	Linux Intel H.264/H.265 encoding sub-script
lib/encode_cpu.sh	Linux CPU fallback H.264/H.265 sub-script
lib/encode_gif.sh	Linux GIF encoding sub-script (hardware or CPU first pass)

Usage

Windows

1. Place videos in Input\.
2. Double-click Encode.bat or run it from a command prompt.
3. Select the format and hardware accelerator in one menu.
4. Answer the audio, quality, FPS and scale prompts.
5. Encoded files appear in Output\.

Linux / macOS

1. Place videos in Input/.
2. Run:

   ./encode.sh

3. Select the format and hardware accelerator.
4. Answer the audio, quality, FPS and scale prompts.
5. Encoded files appear in Output/.

Notes

• The FFmpeg command chains and encoder parameters are preserved from the original Windows scripts. Only the wrapper logic, parameter passing and cross-platform paths were changed.
• PNG encoding was removed because it was not as useful as the video and GIF workflows.
• The old batch files have been moved to the archive/ folder for reference.
• All encoders (Linux .sh and Windows .bat) now force output to 8-bit yuv420p and round width/height to even numbers. This fixes two common failures:
  • odd-resolution inputs causing Picture width must be an integer multiple of the specified chroma subsampling
  • 10-bit (or other high-bit-depth) inputs being rejected by 8-bit hardware encoders

Note: GitHub Copilot assisted with command structure layout. All FFmpeg parameters are based on personal research and optimisation.