Simple Media Encoder

Re-encode and compress your media files quickly and efficiently with this convenient tool. Uses FFMPEG and the Qt toolkit under GPL v3.

The default interface allows anyone to quickly re-encode media files.

The so-called "expert" interface gives advanced users a bit more control over the exported result.

News

An update that will bring this app to release status is planned this February! Expected features are:

• Enhanced compatibility, reducing the amount of edge-cases with incompatible files
• Smart selection of optimal encoding parameters for the most popular codecs
• Widened range of codecs displayed to all those available on the system
• Better bitrate calculation when compressing to reach a target size
• Numerous bug fixes and major code quality improvements!

Compatibility

• Windows 10, Windows 11, and Linux. Earlier versions of Windows are not supported.
• Tested on Windows 11 and Arch Linux.

Features

With this tool, one may:

• Re-encode any file type supported by FFMPEG;
• Choose whether to export video, audio, or both;
• Quickly select a quality preset, or manually choose your codecs;
• Choose audio bitrate;
• Re-scale video with automatic aspect ratio adjustment;
• Manually adjust aspect ratio;
• Specify a target file size for easy compression of large files;
• Change the video and audio speed or manually set a video framerate;
• Specify custom FFMPEG arguments for advanced use.

Furthermore, one may:

• Choose to auto-fill all fields when a file is selected;
• Delete the input file on success;
• Decide whether to warn when a file is about to be overwritten;
• Specify the output name as a file name or as a suffix to the input name;
• View detailed statistics about your media file (to be implemented).

As well as customize behavior on successful re-encoding:

• Open the resulting media in the file explorer;
• View the resulting media in the default media player;
• Auto-close the utility for a one-shot export.

Conveniently, all these parameters are saved when the tool is closed.

How to install

Binaries

A binary release is available for Windows! Although still in beta, it should be quite usable.

Source

This tool uses the Qt for Application Development framework, under the GNU GPL v3 open source license.
It must be installed for compiling SME.

On Windows

If Qt is not already installed on your system:

• Download the Qt Open Source installer here for easy setup of the framework;
• Proceed with the installation of Qt (you will need a free Qt developer account):
  • Ideally, select version >= 6.3.
  • Under "Developer and Designer tools", choose the Qt Creator IDE (unless you intend to use CLI) and the latest MinGW compiler.

Once Qt is installed:

• Open Qt Creator and clone this repository in File -> New Project... -> Import project.
• Press Ctrl+R to run the project.

Before you get going:

• On Windows, you must manually download and install the ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe binaries.
  • You may find links to mirrors here.
  • Extract the archive and place the two binaries (and associated libraries if present) inside the bin directory (or add them to your PATH).

On Linux

If the Qt development libraries are not already installed on your system:

• Install Qt libraries version >= 6.3 and qmake
  • From your package manager (recommended, although some sources may provided outdated Qt packages).
    • qt6-base on Arch, or qt6-base-dev on Ubuntu
  • With the Open Source installer (see instructions for Windows above).

If ffmpeg is not already installed on your system (and in your PATH):

• Install ffmpeg with your package manager.

Once everything is installed:

• Clone this repository.
  • Run qmake SimpleMediaEncoder.pro or qmake6 SimpleMediaEncoder.pro to generate makefiles
  • Run make -j32 to compile.
  • The executable is output in the bin/ directory.

Technologies used

• ffmpeg and ffprobe
• The Qt framework (Qt Widgets)

Special thanks to

Theodore l'Heureux (for his consulting and beta-testing)

Found an issue?

This is a beta, and the tool may face difficulties opening certain files.
Should you encounter such a problematic file, feel free to send it over alongside a Github issue; it will help finding the problem. Any bug reports are also greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading through this and cheers!