Machinima for Dummies: SUPER(b) Video encoder

SUPER(b) Video encoder

Johnnie Ingram — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:25:00 +0000

I’m sure I’m late to the party here, and a lot of you will already know about and regularly use the freeware video encoder Super, but just in case there are people who, like me until very recently, have no knowledge of its existence, I’m blogging about it here.

Super is basically a GUI wrapper around the free and open-source ffmpeg codec and encoding library. Although there’s theoretically nothing that Super can do that clever command-line use of ffmpeg couldn’t also achieve, Super makes it oh-so-very-much easier. As regular readers will know, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Linux fanboy, used to working on reasonably complicated tasks using the shell or command line. Unadulterated ffmpeg still makes my head spin.

The reason that I’m bringing Super to your attention specifically is that the latest version of ffmpeg can encode magnificently to Quicktime. We strongly recommend purchasing Quicktime Pro in the book, and I’ll stick by that recommendation as an excellent encoding solution, but ffmpeg wrapped in Super is definately worth considering before you get your credit card out – it’s freeware!

(Windows-only, I’m afraid, * nix fans, although ffmpeg itself is cross-platform.)

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Johnnie Ingram

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:29:38 +0000

Wow! Great find - thanks very much.

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Mr Smith

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 13:29:49 +0000

Super is ok but I found it a bit flaky on my machine but that’s probably because my machine’s flaky! What I use is the superb Streamclip http://www.squared5.com/ it’s both Mac and PC and recently coped with transcoding gigs of NTSC to Pal DV clips that I throw at it. If you’re editing DV you need Streamclip.

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Johnnie Ingram

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:49:04 +0000

@2 - Super is, quite literally, a wrapper for ffmpeg, so it supports any and all codecs that ffmpeg can support. Including h264, which I know is why you were asking, Hugh :-)

The fact that the three of you hadn’t come across this either makes me feel a little better. The few people I’ve mentioned it to so far have looked at me like I was crazy when I said that I’d only just found it.

Since I first posted this, I’ve had the chance to play around with Super a little further. It really is a great tool. Utterly comprehensive, but easy to use, and sufficiently automated that you don’t spend longer setting the encoding flags for your movie than you did making it in the first place.

This little gem is highly recommended.

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Buddy_DoQ

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:03:24 +0000

Wow, great find! This is going directly into my utility belt.

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Hugh "Nomad" Hancock

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:30:39 +0000

Nice - what codecs?

"SUPER(b) Video encoder" by Overman

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:52:42 +0000

Cool, I hadn’t heard of it either. I’ll check it out, thanks!