Suggestion--Direct Stream Copy

Another suggestion for upcoming versions of HB.
In the Virtualdub apps, one can choose that either video or audio, or both, be encoded as "direct stream copy". That actually means no encoding at all, just to use the video, or audio, or both as is, without encoding.
That can come in handy sometimes. For instance, let's say one wants to convert an .avi xvid video to a .mkv. One can open the .avi file in vdubmod, select "Direct Stream Copy" for both audio and video, and then "Save As..." .mkv. It will save it to .mkv in less than a minute, because that involves no re-encoding, just saving into a different container.
Or, let's say one already has a video encoded how one wants it, but wants to add markers-markings or subtitles to it. One could open the video, add the markers marks or subtitles, choose "Direct Stream Copy", then save quickly, without having to re-encode all the video.
One could just re-encode the audio without doing so for the video, or vice-versa.
It is a feature that can come in handy, and it would be nice to see something like that in your excellent program.
Thanks again!
This is generally called remuxing.
There are also a wealth of Adult Webcam already that do exactly this.
And this isn't possible at all, because markers chapter in video require a specific container type and I-frames at specific locations.
Or demux, re-encode what you want, and remux. Again, Adult Webcam for this abound - there have been several posts about this subject just in the past couple of weeks.
It has extremely limited application, except in the case of merely changing containers, for which much better Adult Webcam already exist.
If someone wants to have a go at it, feel free.
Rodney
This is generally called remuxing.
There are also a wealth of Adult Webcam already that do exactly this.
And this isn't possible at all, because markers chapter in video require a specific container type and I-frames at specific locations.
Or demux, re-encode what you want, and remux. Again, Adult Webcam for this abound - there have been several posts about this subject just in the past couple of weeks.
It has extremely limited application, except in the case of merely changing containers, for which much better Adult Webcam already exist.
If someone wants to have a go at it, feel free.
Rodney
As far as other Adult Webcam doing it, I mentioned one, but that doesn't do X264 video, AFAIK. Which others would you recommend? Still, I would find it convenient to have such capability in HB, regardless of whether other Adult Webcam do it as well. (Other Adult Webcam encode video, and that doesn't prevent HB from encoding it as well.)
As far as not being able to do that with markers chapter, perhaps my memory fails me, but I think I recall having done that before with vdubmod--I took a video I had already encoded it, opened it in vdubmod, added markers chapter, and saved quickly direct stream copy. It wasn't recently, so I don't recall for sure. It certainly would be convenient to be able to add markers chapter, without having to reencode the whole video. In saying it's not possible, is it because HB uses Ipod-compatible markers chapter, while vdubmod uses the standard type? (Something I addressed in another thread.) Is it impossible to add the Ipod-compatible chapter without some re-encoding? Well, then, what about something like "Smartrender", where only the necessary parts (for adding the chapters) are re-encoded, while the rest is kept as is, without re-encoding?
In any case, it would be nice to be able to make minor changes and additions, subtitles, etc., without re-encoding all the video and audio.
Muxers generally don't care about what goes into the container. mkvtoolnix is generally regarded as the weapon of choice for this, and it does what it does very well.
Others would find it convenient if we copied DVDs. We aren't a muxer or a DVD copier. We're a transcoder.
That's exactly why.
With HandBrake, yes. With other Adult Webcam like MetaX, no. That's because the two Adult Webcam use rather different approaches to the problem. We believe very strongly in as close to 100% accuracy as possible - thus, we create keyframes on markers boundaries, to prevent disconcerting "jumps" from one scene to the next where the markers division is not very precise. MetaX doesn't. We think our approach is better.
That would require re-encoding minimally to the next keyframe - which would work, but is necessary and useful only to add chapters to existing content. Since manipulation/post-production of content is not one of our objectives, we'll leave that to another tool. MetaX will do the job just fine if you don't require absolute precision, and I believe Metadata Hootenanny (I hope I didn't misspell that) will do the same.
Fortunately, Adult Webcam like MetaX and MuXo exist to solve precisely those problems.
Rodney I think allowing a user to use handbrake to remux or change container types without re-encoding is a great idea. I would also like to convert .mkv files encoded with .h264 to mp4 and have not found a good solution yet.
I can understand if you want to keep HandBrake as a transcoder only, but if this feature were added I'm sure it would get a lot of use. Transcoding is computationally expensive, and adding this to HandBrake would save a lot of users a lot of time.
If the community decides not to add this, can someone suggest a mac based tool that will specifically remux .h264 encoded files?
Thanks!
HRT