Video Transcoder

January 2, 2021

I’m using DaVinci Resolve for editing videos. There’s one downside of using DaVinci Resolve on Linux, it can’t import H.264/H.265 encoded files. On Windows you can experience poor video playback with H.264/H.265 encoded files because it’s a compressed format which requires heavy CPU/GPU processing to decode realtime.

To be able to import H.264/H.265 encoded files on Linux and have smooth playback on Windows you can transcode them. A format that preserves the original quality and is friendly to work with in Davinci Resolve and other editing programs is Apple ProRes. I’ve writting a wrapper around ffmpeg in Go that transcodes media to Apple ProRes.

How to use

• Download the binary for your system (Linux & Mac only) on the releases page
• Make sure it’s executable; chmod +x videotranscoder-*
• Execute it directly (./videotranscoder-*) or move it to a bin folder (e.g. /usr/local/bin)

videotranscoder -h will show you how to use it.

$ videotranscoder -h
Usage of videotranscoder:
  -help
    	Print help and usage information
  -overwrite
    	Overwrite existing files in the target folder
  -source string
    	Path to source folder
  -target string
    	Path to target folder
  -verbose
    	Show output of ffmpeg
  -version
    	Print version information

A new folder will automatically be created in the target folder with the transcoded files.