About the next version of MediaCoder (Stanley posted on November 17th, 2007 )

As you may know, the version number of 0.6.0 has been kept for nearly one year’s time though MediaCoder has been improved consistently during this period of time. I admit that I am quite conservative on the increase of version number of MediaCoder. Anyway after one year, I finally decided to increase the version number soon. Once a most stable 0.6.0 is released, let’s leave 0.6.0 in its best condition and steps towards 0.7.0.

Here I list some of my thoughts about the major new features of the next version:

  • Adding batch image conversion/processing feature (base on ImageMagick)
  • Implementing multi-segment simultaneous transcoding (this will optimize speed for multi-core processors even if the encoder doesn’t support multi-threading and no doubt 4-core will have a significant speed-up)
  • Implementing multi-computer transcoding / transcoding farm (will adopt controller/agent mode, agent will run on Linux natively).
  • x64 version
  • Fully XUL-based user interface (the classic user interface will be kept of course)
  • New graphics

Of course these new features won’t come suddenly in a release. They will be implemented gradually. If you have suggestions, please just tell me.

COMMENTS: 58 Comments »

58 Responses

  1. hansatan says:

    Well I use MediaCoder a lot and I really like idea of support for 4-cores CPUs so I can finally make some good use of it 🙂

  2. Project Mayu says:

    How about making it more user friendly.
    If i have a 16:9 1900px video and want to resize it to 320x240px and keep the aspect ratio and burn in the subtitles, currently its a pain in the ass to do that.

  3. stanley says:

    When you get familiar with the software, you will probably feel less painful. 😀

  4. hansatan says:

    God damn sure stanley… By the way I’d like to see improved time selection and screenshot making panel so we can choose the movie “end” frame by frame for example by pushing the direction key on the keyboard etc.

  5. Nikthomas says:

    It would be nice to improve cp use on quad cores, at the moment cpu use hovers at 40% or lower. Great program.

  6. Roland Rohrbacher says:

    I hope the next version will onvert videos to the .SMV forma, which comes with severl asian players

  7. mixer says:

    Stanley, I’m always looking forward to your developments with MediaCoder.

    I wonder if you would like to add any audio effects? I don’t know anything about programming but I found these links. Sorry if this is a bad idea.

    http://osalp.sourceforge.net/
    http://www.harmony-central.com/Computer/Programming/

    All these below would enhance the audio:

    Audio Metering: (visual indication of audio levels)
    Delay: (Producing a flange effect or quasi-stereo)
    Filters: (Filtering out noise/unwanted noise or improving audio fidelity)
    Reverb: Adding echo to audio, especially helpful for music.

  8. mcuserG says:

    I wanted to transform so a video that voice I wanted to weaken , but the video picture is bad, however i turned it off the video setting(directstream copy) to not change on video.
    Why change the video quality when i say not change?

  9. danny says:

    There’s a problem with Flash Video converter – some videos downloaded from YouTube and converted with MediaCoder have audio out of sync (audio is playing too slow). Download some video from youtube (I recommed http://kej.tw/flvretriever/ ) and check it out… Thanks.

  10. Mauro Castaldi says:

    I agree with hansatan. The time selection could be improved and it also could be implemented a realtime two videos comparison because it takes a big number of tries to get the max quality when selecting options in that window (deinterlace method, contrast and so on).

  11. Roger says:

    Great! 😀

    Keep up the awesome work, thanks.

  12. rob says:

    great great software!..
    maybe i havent explored the features well..
    but one thing i’ve always wanted to do is
    to mux multiple audio streams .. and parellely load files..
    one ‘great improvement’ would be ‘encoding ranges’ within a file.. specially for x264.. to change quantizer setting for different parts of a single file.. as splitting and encoding them..leads to a lot of sync issues.. for example multiple language tracks..
    hope this isnt too long.. : )

  13. stanley says:

    Thanks for your attention. I will remember what all that you have requested. However, they will on different priorities. Hopefully MediaCoder will always getting better with supports from its users.

  14. Dave says:

    Multicore usage would be brilliant, but the one thing I would like to see is a frame to frame eraser (for adverts etc), rather than just top and tailing – with something similar on the audio side as well perhaps.
    That would make it the true Swiss Army knife of AV.

  15. steven says:

    An integrated updater would be really nice. Also, moving completely away from relying on an external web browser would be a good step IMHO (some of us use Firefox with multiple tabs saved between sessions, and opening them all up just to tell me thank you for using the program is more like a shot in the arm than a “we’re glad you’re using this”). You could put all the intro in a splash screen that is much less obtrusive and annoying. Project Mayu did have a good point – the menu layout is not very intuitive. It might help to conform to some of the menu item standards found at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511502.aspx#standardMenus , such as the last menu item being “Help” and having “About” at the bottom of that list where most programs have it. A unified “Tools” menu would be better for having the “Settings” item. A revamped settings box would really make things smoother (one that didn’t rely on my browser – the current one is very user-unfriendly). One last thing – the two boxes at the bottom that control the A/V encoders really need to be resizeable. Having to click the nice little left and right buttons to get to the other four or five items is nice the first time, but only the first time. I maximise the window and they’re still the same size, leaving a lot of blank real estate. Other than that, your program does pretty much everything I could want. Keep up the good work!

  16. hansatan says:

    Well at the moment in my opinion getting better about 2-4 cores CPU usage is major priority but being back to our chit chat about video lenght selection you should do something like a virtualdub’s selection bar it’s very handy, keep it in mind and good luck we love your tool and all of your efforts!

  17. stanley says:

    I think I will add a more user friendly interface for cutting/editing video clips. At the moment, you can considering make use of EDL. Here is some info on EDL: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/EDL

  18. Istvan says:

    Hi Stanley,

    I need sometimes an opportunity to convert the same video with different bitrates and formats. Would not it be possible to integrate this feature in your batch converter? One could activate different output-formats and bitrates at the same time. The filename could contain the chosen options at the export.

    It would be a very good thing if one tests MC. This would allow us testing different options on a very quick ways.

    The UI is not so clear at the first sight. After months it is of course ok. It could be anyway better. 🙂

    Thank you very much for your efforts.

    Regards, Istvan

  19. B!ink says:

    Good luck with future releases of MediaCoder.

    🙂

  20. SirAuron says:

    I suggest you move further feature requests and questions to the forum where they are more likely to be answered as that’s the place most of us frequent (and your posts will stay visible for a long time).

  21. Dom says:

    Great Program!

    I like the idea of a multi-computer transcoding.

    How about a native linux version usable without WINE.

    Could be integrated with a really small distro – then I could take my old laptop and use that exclusively for transcoding

  22. hansatan says:

    Yeah Stanley, the EDL seems what we’re looking for at first sight 😉

  23. stanley says:

    There will be a good UI for generating and using EDL later.

  24. TechGuru says:

    getting away from having to use the web browser for the encoding options would be nice
    and more indept explanation for what a perticular setting does

    also id like more of the advanced mkv features supported
    for example
    lets say I have a mkv with 2 video.. 2 audio.. 2 subtitles and 1 font
    I’d like to be able to encode each of those seperatly or copy them to the new mkv file

    like if I want to encode a new mkv from the orignal with video stream 2 ..copy the subtitles and font and encode audio stream 1.
    currently mediacoder can’t really do this properly
    especially the coping of the font or subtitles

    I understand the mkv format is a pretty advanced format and hard to work with..but it would be nice to be able to do.

  25. Oxmosys says:

    Yeah, a native Linux version would be a dream 🙂 Thanks a lot for mediacoder which is treasure.

  26. stanley says:

    Support from users is also a treasure for MediaCoder. 😀

  27. Dave says:

    I had a look at EDL for video editing, but even with a shell to operate it, it is I believe time, rather than frame based. I currently use Videoredo, MPEG Video Wizard DVD or Videodub-MPEG2 to edit, which gives me the frame based editing that gives the best results before processing with VideoCoder.
    An additional problem with some time based editors is that they don’t accept REC files because the time stamp isn’t available.
    Obviously it is up to you, but an integral frame based editor is what would be most useful to me.
    dave

  28. hansatan says:

    Yeah frame based editing would be good idea…

  29. Josh says:

    Hey Stanley,

    A version that could run natively on Mac OS X would be great as well as Linux. Keep up the good work it is a great program, probably the best multi-purpose converter!

  30. bill says:

    I agree, native versions for Mac OS X & Linux would be a great idea for the future. Oh yeah, I love the idea of putting in an image converter too! Also I think EDL sounds good if you can create a UI for it. Great Job & Good Luck 😀

  31. Kon says:

    load file的时候总是不稳定,有时候需要block(由控制创建进程的软件)一些coder才能顺利load入file特别是wmv的文件,而奇怪的时候这不影响转换,,,,囧
    非常喜欢这个软件,加油~

  32. Anime Fan says:

    I would love to see the ability to keep the subtitles in MKV videos. I can select the english track which is great but there are still a lot of videos that only have subtitles and no english tracks. Once I can keep the subtitles from my videos and convert them to a dvd format I will gladly pay good money for the program and it’s continued developement!!

  33. ZippyDSMlee says:

    Media coder is a awesome program, the UI is a pain tho,in order to resize a vid by quality it should only take 4 clicks and a slider

    drag and drop vids in click the format you want (defaults to coping the audio unless other wise selected) and sldie the slider to the quality you want and rezie the vid.

    other quick size options could be ratio,res,audio and its settings, I know tis dounting to put in under 1 window with a minuim of defaults to just get a vid resized in one piece,but try a simpler UI mode for quick conversions and whatnot and the current UI mode for people who know WTF they are doing LOL

  34. Jupidad says:

    How about trying to get .SVI format support, Samsung Media Players use this.

  35. 本尊分身 says:

    3980版一处BUG
    在我开始转换后,如果又新加了文件,处理好像没问题,但是”全部任务进度”和”状态”处显示的百分比有问题.

  36. Aylwin says:

    I’d like to see more flexible resize options. Right now, the dimensions are fixed. I think it would be better if it’s possible to only specify the resize width and then have the height adjusted automatically.

    For example, I might want to resize a 1280×720 video to half the width. So if I specified a width of 640, the height should probably be 360. That gives me a resized video of 640×360. However, with the fixed choices that are currently implemented, I can only choose the closest option which is 640×368.

    It’s for this reason alone that I haven’t used MediaCoder that much. Or am I missing something?

  37. hansatan says:

    @Aylwin

    Maybe I didn’t understeand your post properly but you can type resolution manually you don’t need to use one of the “ready to use presets”…

  38. vostoc says:

    great piece of SW. great work stanley.

    maybe i am not objective, but i think it would be nice to have integrated menus instead of (or like alternate to) this really nice http demon, because it’s little bit boring to watch your browser to pop-up every time when you need to change something.
    it’s only my opinion too, but maybe you can split this converters for exotic mobile devices from core edition of MC, or compile something like “core edition” without them and make it downloadable because for most users, power with standard encoders is that wonderful thing with MC, rather than the options that they didn’t use at all. you can compile mobile edition, too, and that would be some really new on the software field.
    in every case amazing work dude and keep doing this. congratulations

  39. Alexey says:

    Need profiles for x264, like in MeGUI:
    http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813

  40. psdesigner says:

    I hope you can add “real media” and “quicktime” encoding !
    i actually use easy real media tools for encoding to RMVB http://redcheek.net/erm/, but i like mediacoder and hope it can be the all in one encoding solution one day !

  41. Istvan says:

    Hi Stanley,

    It would be pretty useful to make it possible for the user (F. e in Forum) to make poll on the different suggestions and requested features.

    It would allow you to make better priorities. In a USA-Forum you can rang a feature from one to ten. (Ten is the best one…)

    It works very good …

    Regards,

    Istvan

  42. Gabriel says:

    Mediacoder is fantastic. I’m a PSP and PS3 owner and i’m very happy with the function to encode PSP videos. A PS3 profile should be GREAT to make mediacoder perfect.

  43. Jayson says:

    I love Mediacoder, is there anyway you can add the transcoding to uncompressed Avi to the list of available options?

    If there is a way to do it with it now..please email me at alexachannel@gmail.com

    Jayson

  44. Unix_user says:

    I would love a version that could run natively on my Mac OS X!!!!! So I didn’t have to switch OS to encode something (I know there are other programs available or I could use Wine, but none are as good and universal). Also the idea of an image converter is great, now I could use if for all my multimedia! Thanks for the great program stanley!!!!

  45. Shiraz Kanga says:

    How about device support for iPhones and the Nintendo Wii’s Opera browser (Flash) aka Internet Channel?

  46. stanley says:

    Thank you all for your suggestions. Some can really give me inspirations. 🙂

  47. Phyrro says:

    Post en español.
    Hey!
    Felicidades por esta fabulosa aplicación, la he usado y funciona muy bien. me alegra que para el proximo lanzamiento haya nuevos gráficos, la verdad que estan algo feos.. xD jeje,
    Un saludo.

  48. It would be GREAT if there was a way to integrate a visible image watermark on the output video. Perhaps using some directshow watermark filter as an intermediate filter. No other free or low-cost app can do this right now (and with decent results).
    Thank you,
    Spiros

  49. Mark says:

    I am transcoding movies I recorded from tv and would find it great if one cut out segments of the movies like the commercials. I like your mediacoder very much and use it a lot. Great software!

  50. Phoenix76 says:

    First of all thank you very much for this great software.

    Suggestions:

    Audio/Video files Trim, Split & Join jobs without recompression.

    Have a nice day.