[TUTORIAL] Mux to save a life

Aight, because I basically live with you guys and I love you, here you go I'm saving your lives.

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Lemme teach y'all about the joys of muxing.

Advantages:

• smaller file size
  
• no quality loss
  
• fixes the 10bit problem
  
• takes very little time
  

Disadvantages:

• only does .mkv to .mp4
  

So, like, what's muxing?
I don't exactly know how it works, but I have some sort of like.. explanation/imagery:

Consider a safe (MKV container) that you need a password (media player codecs) to open. Inside of the safe, there's this book full of pictures (h264 channel) and it's all you want. Except the only tool you have is your hands (Sony Vegas or other) and no knowledge of how to open a safe (no codecs to read it in Vegas).

Muxing steals that book and shoves it in a cardboard box (MP4 container).

BUT WHAT IF I HAVE 10BIT FOOTAGE MY LIFE IS OVER
Fear not my child, I have something for u.

A .bat encoder, converts 10bit to 8bit. 10bit doesn't work on editing programs because every byte is made out of 10 bits instead of the universal 8 bits (it takes less place), and Vegas & co. are programmed to decode 8bit bytes only. Like, if 8bit was English, 10bit is Chinese.

Not everyone speaks Chinese, amirite?

WHAT DO I NEED OMG (these are links btw)

1. 10bit to 8bit Encoder
   
2. MKVtoolnix
   
3. MKVextractGUI
   
4. MyMP4Box GUI
   
5. MKVcleaver
   

WHAT DO I DO OMFG
Step 1: install all your stuff.
Install all of the above.
I don't remember exactly when but there's one of these that asks you to locate MKVtoolnix. It's not hard, just do it. JUST. DO IT.

Step 2: in case you have 10bit footage.
Extract the 10bit to 8bit Encoder RAR file to a folder.

Copy or move the file you want to convert to that folder. You have to do this, otherwise the encoder won't run.

Drop the file into the .bat file.


A command prompt will show up. You just have to wait until it's done.


When the window closes, you'll have two .mkv files, and the converted one says ".8bit.mkv" at the end.

You're welcome.

Step 3: muxing.
Open up MKVExtractGUI and import whatever file you want to extract. Then uh, obviously press extract. It shouldn't take long at all.


If you want to batch extract the h264 steam, use MKVcleaver. Just import all the files and select the video channel.
It'll take a while but at least you don't need to pay it much attention until it's done.


Onto muxing! Open MyMP4Box and drag the file on there, pick the output directory and "Mux"! o/

Code:

Begin: 1/12/2016 6:09:21 PM, End: 1/12/2016 6:09:25 PM, Difference: 00:00:03, STATUS: Complete
Command Line: "D:\Program Files\My MP4Box GUI\tools\MP4Box.exe" -add "E:\Footage\[HorribleSubs] Sailor Moon Crystal - 15 [720p]_track1_und.h264:fps=29.970:delay=0:name=[HorribleSubs] Sailor Moon Crystal - 15 [720p]_track1_und.h264" -new "E:\Footage\[HorribleSubs] Sailor Moon Crystal - 15 [720p]_track1_und.h264-muxed.mp4"

It took 3 seconds, woop.

NB: You might not want to import everything though, because it will encode everything into a single file. Just import one file at a time, do "Add to Queue" and keep going. Then, on the queue window, click start and it'll do everything separately.

I accidentally encoded the three Sailor Moon movies into a single file. Importing that on Sony Vegas was a surprise, lol.


How do I know my footage is 10bit?
Well, y'either got it from a torrent/website that said it was or...
If you have MPC, Shift+F10 to bring up the video's properties, scroll down and find "Bit Depth"...

i love u

is it faster than Zarxgui or MKVtoMP4?

Depends on your computer's specs but generally, yep. Faster than Zarx at least.

The encoding part takes a while but the muxing is really fast.

As long as I don't have to wait too long for 1080p 10bit blu rays to encode.

That would take a while, I'd suggest you just have patience with it especially if it's 1080p. xD

I'll try it to see if it takes less than 1hr 30min of what zarxgui does

You encode your episodes with Zarx? o.o

sirenaim wrote:You encode your episodes with Zarx? o.o

Not all, it depends. Works pretty well though and doesn't take too long.

Just tried it and wow this is really incredible, thank you so much!!