HowTo: Install HandBrakeCLI on your unRAID server (rather than in a VM)


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I've just started to look into reencode a lot bunch of documentary DVDs I have.

 

@ClunkClunk, thank you for the precompiled packages.

 

My origintal intent was to reencode all the DVDs to mkv with x.264 parameter and whatever quality, but I would like to preserve all the audio tracks in their original format (ie. keep them as they are).

 

It seems that as there is no such parameter, it is not a simple task. I figured that the only way to do this is to do a scan first and then save and parse the output to set the correct number of tracks and formats during the encode.

 

Have somebody experimented something like this yet?

 

Thank you for the feedbacks.

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I don't normally use mkv, but I think you can generally always use AC3 passthrough to achieve what you want.

 

How about something like this:

HandBrakeCLI -t 1 -f mkv -e x264 -q 20 -a 1 -E ac3 -6 auto -R auto -B auto -m -i SOME_DVD -o Some_DVD.mkv

 

Seems to pass the AC3 through without any re-encodes at all.

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Thank you for the feedback.

 

Yes, this could potentially work (I think), but the bigger problem is with the number of audio tracks.

I want to preserve all, ie. if there is 2 or 3, then all 2 or 3, but of course a general command would needed in a batch process. Unfortunatelly if I set -a 1,2,3 then HB cli is exiting if the input file doesn't exactly has 3 tracks. Means you always have to give the correct number of tracks for this parameter which of course you don't know in a batch process.

 

The scan first, then parse scan results approach was suggested on HB's irc channel, but my scripting knowledge is close to 0, so I am not able to accomplish this... :(

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here it is:

for i in /mnt/user/Movies/*.ISO

do

  f=`basename $i .ISO`

  HandBrakeCLI -i $i -t 1 -o /mnt/disk/hdi1/$f.avi -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v

  echo $i

done

 

Hi Joe L.

Would it be an easy and quick excercise for you to help me out on how to modify your script to be recursive on say a hard coded path and always save the converted file in the same folder as the original iso was?

 

Or that would be more difficult task to just quickly draft it down?

 

Thank you!

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Here it is:

for i in /mnt/user/Movies/*.ISO

do

 f=`basename $i .ISO`

 HandBrakeCLI -i $i -t 1 -o /mnt/disk/hdi1/$f.avi -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v

 echo $i

done

 

Hi Joe L.

Would it be an easy and quick excercise for you to help me out on how to modify your script to be recursive on say a hard coded path and always save the converted file in the same folder as the original iso was?

 

Or that would be more difficult task to just quickly draft it down?

 

Thank you!

 

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename

do

echo converting $filename

f=`basename "$filename" .ISO`

d=`dirname "$filename"`

HandBrakeCLI -i "$filename" -t 1 -o "$d/$f.avi" -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v

echo $filename completed

done

 

This will do it for everything under /mnt/user.  If you want a different path, change it where I highlighted it in blue above.

It specifically looks for files with a capital .ISO suffix.  If yours are lower case, change the .ISO to .iso in both places in the script.

The output file is the same name as the input, but with a .avi suffix, and it is stored in the same folder as the .ISO

 

Joe L.

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Hi Joe L.,

 

I have tried it and seems that at on my end it is only converting the first find of "find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename"

 

If I just run the command in itself then it finds all the ISOs recursively in the target dir, but the encode gets done only on the first item with a returned prompt:

 

Rip done!
HandBrake has exited.
/mnt/user/TargetDir/FirstItem.iso completed
root@Tower:/boot/custom/HandBrakeCLI#

 

I haven't modified anything on the script you created. Am I doing something wrong?

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Hi Joe L.,

 

I have tried it and seems that at on my end it is only converting the first find of "find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename"

 

If I just run the command in itself then it finds all the ISOs recursively in the target dir, but the encode gets done only on the first item with a returned prompt:

 

Rip done!
HandBrake has exited.
/mnt/user/TargetDir/FirstItem.iso completed
root@Tower:/boot/custom/HandBrakeCLI#

 

I haven't modified anything on the script you created. Am I doing something wrong?

I can't tell what you typed from here.  It will probably type that handbrake has finished after every iso file.  Did you use an editor that did NOT put carriage returns at the ends of lines when you edited the set of commands to change iso to lower case? 

If not, that might be your issue.  Use the "fromdos" command as described in the wiki to fix the script if that is the case.

 

If you type

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print

it will print what it would convert.

 

If you add an echo in front of the handbrake command, (in blue below)  it will print to the screen the commands it would invoke  (instead of invoking them)

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename

do

echo converting $filename

f=`basename "$filename" .ISO`

d=`dirname "$filename"`

echo HandBrakeCLI -i "$filename" -t 1 -o "$d/$f.avi" -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v

echo $filename completed

done

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I can't tell what you typed from here.   It will probably type that handbrake has finished after every iso file.  Did you use an editor that did NOT put carriage returns at the ends of lines when you edited the set of commands to change iso to lower case? 

If not, that might be your issue.  Use the "fromdos" command as described in the wiki to fix the script if that is the case.

 

If you type

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print

it will print what it would convert.

 

If you add an echo in front of the handbrake command, (in blue below)  it will print to the screen the commands it would invoke  (instead of invoking them)

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename

do

echo converting $filename

f=`basename "$filename" .ISO`

d=`dirname "$filename"`

echo HandBrakeCLI -i "$filename" -t 1 -o "$d/$f.avi" -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v

echo $filename completed

done

 

Sorry Joe L., obviously I didn't expect you to see exactly what's wrong here. I just use the wrong expression.

...and I wasn't so clear either. I meant, when I run "find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print " command separately, then all the ISOs found recursively in the target folder. Now I've tried the "Echo" debug step to check what the script would invoke and it also looks perfect, it lists the command for all the ISOs, but when I actually run the script, it's still exiting after the first ISO. So the script is perfect, thank you for this again, the problem is on my end, now it's my turn to do my homework and try to figure out what's going on here.

 

Thank you!

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I am really not able to figure this out. I have tried many combinatation without success.

 

If I copy over a few ISOs to a single dir and using your very original script from the first page, then it works perfectly and convert all the ISOs in the dir.

 

But if I put the same ISOs to a subdir and running the script above, then it always only convert the ISO in the first dir. More weirdly, if I put the echo command before the Handbrake command line, then if I run the script it is correctly listing the Handbrake command for all the ISOs in all the subdirs.

 

I've also noticed, that in the first case (when all the ISOs are in the same dir and I am using the original script), if I hit ctrl-c to cancel the script, it is only canceling the current convert and the script starts the next one in the queue, so I have to hit ctrl-c as many ISOs are in the queue. In case I use the "new" script on a subdirs structure, if I hit ctrl-c, the script exits immediately (it is not starting the next ISO in the queue).

Is this something coming for the different behaviour of for and while?

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Ok... Try this

 

Run the command as shown previously with the "echo" preceeding the handbrake command but capture the output in a file like this:

[pre]

cp /dev/null /tmp/iso_hb

find /mnt/user  -name  "*.ISO"  -print | while read filename

do

echo converting $filename

f=`basename "$filename" .ISO`

d=`dirname "$filename"`

echo HandBrakeCLI -i "$filename" -t 1 -o "$d/$f.avi" -f avi -p -e ffmpeg -S 700 -a 1 -E lame -B 160 -R 0 -6 dp12 -D 1 -v  | tee -a /tmp/iso_hb

echo $filename completed

done

[/pre]

When the command runs, you will have a file in /tmp named iso_hb containing all the individual handbrake commands to be run to convert your files.

 

You can then just execute that file of commands with

chmod +x /tmp/iso_hb

/tmp/iso_hb

 

My best guess is you are running out of memory when running in a loop.

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Hi all,

 

Just installed this on 4.5.4 (unmenu installed) and it worked great... or so I thought!

 

The image is blurry around any movement and the sound is static/garbled.  Handbrake svn3284

 

Any thoughts or other options? I have a bunch of iso I want to convert to avi/mp4

 

I just used the stock HandBrakeCLI -i 01.iso -o 01.mp4

 

 

Thanks!

KermitJr

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Ok... Try this

 

...

 

My best guess is you are running out of memory when running in a loop.

 

Thanks Joe L.!

Sorry for the late reponse, but I am abroad for a week with very limited access to Internet. I will try out your suggestion when I am back at home. (Concerning the memory issue, I think 3GB should be enough for my test dir with only 3 ISOs :), so I guess there has to be something else).

 

Thank you again!

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Ok... Try this

 

...

 

My best guess is you are running out of memory when running in a loop.

 

Thanks Joe L.!

Sorry for the late reponse, but I am abroad for a week with very limited access to Internet. I will try out your suggestion when I am back at home. (Concerning the memory issue, I think 3GB should be enough for my test dir with only 3 ISOs :), so I guess there has to be something else).

 

Thank you again!

with only three, you might agree, BUT are any of the three ISO images over 3GB in size?  Remember, they are being read into memory as they are being converted, and the disk buffers will use up nearly all the available memory.  As handbrake reads in a .ISO, it might leave far less free memory than you might think.

 

Joe L.

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Hi Joe L.,

 

Still from abroad, but I had some time and connection to try it out, and now I am even more confused.

It seems that this way, not only the handbrake command for the first ISO gets written to /tmp/iso_hb (as I would expect from the above), but for the last ISO. For me it doesn't make any sense and I feel really like a dumb, but please see the attached screenshot. The script lists all the 3 iso files I have in that test dir, but it only writes the handbrake command for the last to /tmp/hb_iso

 

I hope everyrhing will be visible on the screenshot.

Untitled.png.18d3766084ec30a37e08c1983c16a125.png

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Hi Joe L.,

 

Still from abroad, but I had some time and connection to try it out, and now I am even more confused.

It seems that this way, not only the handbrake command for the first ISO gets written to /tmp/iso_hb (as I would expect from the above), but for the last ISO. For me it doesn't make any sense and I feel really like a dumb, but please see the attached screenshot. The script lists all the 3 iso files I have in that test dir, but it only writes the handbrake command for the last to /tmp/hb_iso

 

I hope everyrhing will be visible on the screenshot.

my fault.  You would need to use

tee -a /tmp/iso_hb

adding the "-a" option to have it append to the same file each time it is invoked, otherwise, it overwrites the file each time.  

That is why you only see the last file processed.

 

But then, if you run it again, you'll either need to delete the first file contents or you'll see them too with the subsequent runs of handbrake appended.

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hi I try to rip my Simpsons to m4v, I like to keep the max size to 200mb but I cant get it to work what  do I wrong the size  kepp geting to 300mb

 

HandBrakeCLI -i /var/tmp/mnt/SIMPSONS\ SEASON1\ DISC1/ -t 1  -o /mnt/disk5/Ipad-video/SimpsonsS01E01.m4v  -e x264 --size 200 -a 1,1 -E faac,ac3 -B 160,auto -R 48,Auto -6 dpl2,auto -f mp4 -X 720  -m -x level=30:cabac=0:ref=3:mixed-refs=1:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1 -s 1 --subtitle-burn 1

 

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tola, this isn't really the best place for support with HandBrake (you should probably post on the HandBrake forums), but I think what's happening is two things:

• the --size parameter is only the video size, not inclusive of audio. Setting it to 200 means the video will take up 200mb, but audio streams are based on their own settings.

• you're including ac3 audio and aac audio, which is resulting in probably ~100mb of audio data, pushing your filesize to that 300 mark.

 

I'd try setting the --size parameter to about 175, then getting rid of the ac3 stream, and maybe even dropping the bitrate of the aac stream to 128kbit.

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