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Is there an app which can transcode all big videos on my phone on a schedule? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My phone takes pretty good videos but the filesize is absurbd. Using handbrake on desktop can make them far smaller at almost the same quality but my phone storage fills up rather fast and this requires me to move them off device.

Is there an app which keeps track of non transcoded videos in my camera folder and can transcode them on my phone while I am asleep?

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[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Maybe it can be hacked together with Syncthing: have your phone's camera sync with an inbox folder on the desktop, have the desktop pick up the files and transcode them with handbrake, then move the original out of the inbox. This will cause Syncthing to sync the deletion back to your phone, and sync the transcoded version back on your phone.

I'd also check if you can just change the bitrate in your camera app's settings in case there's a way to lower the quality there. Could be noticeable, could be just as good as handbrake, never know with hardware encoding.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Was hoping to do it on device. It will likely take ages but that does not matter much as it can be done overnight.

Camera apps prioritize speed over encoding size as they do not have time nor resources to compress the footage well while recording. Nor should it as it can be done afterwards.

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Seems like your phone would get really hot and rapidly degrade the battery, especially while on charger overnight. It’s not designed for continuous workloads.

Phones can rapidly compress video on the fly because they have dedicated silicon just like video cards in PCs. That’s not why the files are large. Why not just shoot at a lower resolution and frame rate?

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

Plus I suspect the cpu cost of transferring the files is far lower than transcoding.

I keep 100's of gigs in sync across multiple phones and devices, and ST never causes the phones to warm or show significant battery use.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Possibly it could not use 100% of the CPU so the phone does not go up in flames and it runs efficiently.

Most videos are large because the compression is poor. I was able to do some extreme compression of the video with far smaller size and it still looked great using Handbrake. But good compression takes time and far more calculation than fast compression.

Recording in higher res and then compressing works far better than recording in low res. I can even get smaller 4k compressed AV1 videos than the HEVC 1080p videos if I select a lower res.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 4 days ago

This is what I do. Works great

[–] BioMyth@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think you could get something working using termux to install and run ffmpeg on your phone. Then using an automation app, e.g. if this then that, you could run a script in termux to re-encode the files. And automate it at night while charging.

[–] BioMyth@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

Also apparently cron works in termux, so it could all probably be scripted there.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

iPhone here.

My Synology NAS can do this somewhat. The local videos/photos gets sync’d to the NAS. It then becomes available in its own app, when streamed its transcoded. Over time the local photos/videos are removed.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

FFMPEG Media Encoder can do the main part. You will need something else to handle scheduling though.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

All transcoding programs are FFMPEG with a GUI on top in essence. I mostly wondered whether there was an out of the box solution for Android. Don't feel like hacking it together myself.