video encoding guide using Adobe Media Encoder - LONG READ!!

[Kitsune1982]

Hi all, Kitsune1982 here.
Today i would like to share with you a tutorial on video encoding.
While this process has already been touched on in the past by certain fileforums members such as felice and elit/gozarck, i would like to go one
step further and introduce a new software that has been underrated and not a lot of users know about. its not freeware but it does have a 30 day
free trial where you can evaluate it to see if you like it.
This app is made by Adobe and is called Adobe Media Encoder.


Two things i need to point out first though, is you will need to convert your bik and mkv files to mp4 or a similar format first
as AME does not support MKV or bik for input files. it does however support h264/h265 which is the reason i am writing this tutorial.
I am also writing this tutorial to touch up on elit's video re-encoding tutorial but to further a point that AME can give you the EXACT
same results as the already mentioned tools in other tutorials BUT at much lower bitrates! i should also point out
that when re-encoding videos like elit said, encode them at 640x360 resolution, but with AME you can re-encode 1080p or 720p videos to 360p/480p and
depending on the length of the video sometimes you can go as low as 1-2mb/sec video bitrate and still achieve the same results as if you m
were encoding at 3-4mb/sec bitrate! also i'd like to point out that using the tips and software in this tutorial when re-encoding the h264 mp4 back to .bik
using RAD video tools, you can encode the video as high as 100-250k eg 100,000/250,000 bytes and the video will still look as good as if you encoded it at
320,000 bytes!!

ok, well lets get going with it then.

tools you will need:

RAD Video tools - freeware
Adobe Media Encoder - Shareware/Trialware - you can get a free 30 day trial of this on adobe's website, just google it.
any video converter app that can convert bik to mp4 and gives you the option to retain videos original settings.
I personally use Pavtube video converter ultimate but its up to you.
pazera free audio extractor or any freeware app that can convert to mp3/ac3/aac.
yes i know some of the apps in this tutorial are not free but for the quality it gives you
they are more than worth their weight in gold so to speak.

Oh, one thing i forgot to add, if you are working with mp4 videos in AME be -sure- to choose h264 as the output video codec!!!


ok onward with the tutorial.

1.Once you get the required software downloaded and installed, first you will want to decide a few things and analyze the video situation
as you may have to proceed a few different ways depending on your video format. if you are using bik, you can use felice's dlg fox encoder to convert
the bik to mp4/avi/wmv/etc in order to use it with Adobe Media Encoder, henceforth shortened to AME. mkv wont be mentioned here because AME doesnt support mkv
as input.

2.if you have mkv source, you can use DLG fox encoder to convert it to avi/mp4/wmv.

3.once you have your video encoded to mp4/avi/wmv, open up AME.

4.you will see a large set of option panels and many presets you can pick from. again, this depends on your game's video format.
for example the Agarest generations of war games use WMV, ECHO uses mp4, baldurs gate enhanced edition uses webm, etc etc.

5.for this tutorial i will be using Legrand Legacy - tales of the fatebound for the videos as it uses mp4 and mov files.

6.find the video you want to work with, or videos, since you can add more than 1 video to the processing queue, then on the top left corner panel,
click file->add source. navigate to the folder with the videos you want to edit and left click the first video then press ctrl+a to highlight all of them
or hold down shift and individually select the videos to add to the batch queue.

7.another thing you will want to take in consideration when changing the bitrate is the length of the video. generally speaking, for videos that are 5 seconds to 1 minute in
length you will want to use a 1 mb/sec bitrate and for videos 2-3 minutes or longer you will want to use a 3-7 mb/sec bitrate. dont be afraid to go higher than 3-7 mb as due to
the way AME processes videos when you convert it to bik if thats what your target filetype is, you can still use a high bitrate and will still get the same quality and output filesize
as if you used 320k bitrate.

8.for this tutorial i chose credits.mov.

9. add credits.mov as your source video, then left click the video output type. it will open a new window and you will see a lot of different options.
click the > next to summary to close it then click the video tab at the bottom. now change the output frame size to 640x360 - you will have to click the icon that looks like a
chain so that a slash mark appears over it which means you are overriding the default frame size it assigns for the HD video - by left clicking the numbers in blue those being 1920 and 1080
if you're using HD source video, and type in 640 for width and 360 for height. also in the top left corner click output then click 'scale to fill' in the dropdown. you may have to play around with the settings
to get the video size you want and you're not going to get the perfect dimensions in one encode so you may have to repeat the encode process a few times as you change the options in the program.

10.now scroll down and under the bitrate tab click VBR 2 pass in the dropdown box and then depending on your video's length, either use 1 mb/sec if its under a minute, 2-4 mb/sec if its 2 minutes or under and
if its a long video like 5-8 minutes use 4-8 mb bitrate. now click on the blue number next to 'minimum bitrate' and type in your desired bitrate number, then for 'maximum peak bitrate' set the peak bitrate to 2x whatever you chose for the minimum bitrate.

finally tick the 'encode at max depth' box and then click the audio tab.

--- Audio ---

now you will arrive at the audio section. depending on your output video format you will have different options here but as a rule its generally good to stick with 128k bitrate and 24 bit depth.
you will need to click the 'bitrate' dropdown and change it to 128k though.

--- Presets ---

I know a lot of you will not want to have to redo these steps for individual videos so i would like to introduce you to AME's unique feature - encoding presets!
once you have the settings you want for your video, click the -> button next to presets and name your preset, then when you encode a different video, in the encoding queue just right click
on the 'custom' preset and choose your preset from the dropdown list. i should note though that you will need to make a different preset for different output formats but once you do AME will save your preset then you can
just rightclick the preset and choose your custom made one.

--- Final Steps ---

finally, you've set up all your encoding settings and have your video ready to encode. once you have the preset you want enabled and your output is the kind you want, just click the green -> button at the top right to start encoding.in a few seconds or minutes / or hours depending on your source and if you are doing simple re-encodes or encoding a whole dvd/bluray - your video will be ready to view and if you so choose to export to bik or another video format of your choice. hope this guide helped!
catch you all on the flip side.

-Kitsune1982

[PsYcHo_RaGE]

Great work brother since its long process but to achieve Excellent results usually work should be hard