batch video size reduction in nested folders maintaining their source folders as destination

Question

I have a folder containing nested folders which hold many video files with different formats. I want to reduce their size with HandBrake and maintain properties of the original videos (such as frame size, audio sampling frequency, audio bitrate, ...) and use HandBrake's default options except 2 of them (speak about them at the end) and I want the destination folder for each converted video to be its source folder with the same file name with the original file deleted after conversion.

Two HandBrake options to be varied:

• constant quality: 35
• x264 preset: medium

Is there any way to do it with HandBrake possibly in combination with cmd or something?

Answer 1

Here is a one liner solution (run it in command line).

for /R .\test %F in (*.mov) do HandBrakeCLI -e x264 --x264-preset medium -q 35 --crop 0:0:0:0 --aencoder copy -i "%~fF" -o "%~pF%~nF_conv.mp4

Feel free to edit the HandBrakeCLI ... piece to suite your needs (see the HandbrakeCLI guide). I have made source and destination in a way that you can play with (e.g. different extension, naming etc.). See the full reference here

Note that if you want to run it in a batch file, you need to change it to double percentage format:

for /R .\test %%F in (*.mov) do HandBrakeCLI -e x264 --x264-preset medium -q 35 --crop 0:0:0:0 --aencoder copy -i "%%~fF" -o "%%~pF%%~nF_conv.mp4