Ubuntu 14.04 Converting Video Files

Introduction

The idea here is to convert all the files into the .mp4 format so that they can be played in chrome and via the chromecast. Mostly files will come in as .avi or .mkv files. So this covers converting those two types to .mp4

Downloading AVCodec

First you will need to obtain the avcodec application, it can be obtained using the following command:

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

Finding Files

A Handy command for finding the files you need to convert:

find . -name "*.avi"

find . -name "*.mkv"

Converting AVI to MP4

Unfortunately moving from avi to mp4 requires transcoding, which is a longer effort

avconv -i {input_file}.avi -c:v libx264 -c:a copy {output_file}.mp4

Converting MKV to MP4

Since mkv is mostly compatible with mp4, you just need the streams moved from one container to another

avconv -i {input_file}.mkv -codec copy {output_file}.mp4

Sometimes the audio is in AC-3, or has multiple channels, things that chromecast/browsers may not appreciate. So in those cases you can choose to transcode the audio

avconv -i {input_file}.mkv -vcodec copy -strict experimental -acodec aac -ac 2 -ab 93k -{output_file}.mp4

You could also transcode into mp3, which is a generally accepted format for .mp4. This also has the benefit of not requiring an experimental feature set

avconv -i {input_file}.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec mp3 -ac 2 -ab 192k -{output_file}.mp4