X●: A new x264 GUI for Mac

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As us Mac users know, there are no insanely great x264 GUIs available to us. Handbrake comes the closest, but even that doesn't expose nearly as many x264 configuration options as, say, MeGUI, or the x264 commandline app.

Enter X●. X● will be the first fully-featured x264 GUI for Mac. We're aiming to expose every possible x264 configuration, while still keeping a dead-simple Mac-like UI. We intend to follow development right alongside x264, so as to never be out of date.

X● is currently in pre-alpha.

What works:
-Reading from LAVF/LAVC
-Encoding to libx264 or x264 binary
-All GUI configuration (save for minor glitches)
-Presets (saving and loading might be wonky still)
-Image scaling using swscale might work, haven’t tested yet, but it should
-Lots of Mac-specific things like badging, Growl, Sparkle updating, etc

What doesn’t:
-MP4 writing is borked when encoding using the libraries instead of binaries
-Multipass
-Progress reporting needs to be threaded, right now the UI only updates after the encode is completed. Progress can be watched through Console.app, however.
-Preview/review. There is preliminary code to support this, but it’s commented out in this release
-Audio. There is preliminary code to support Core Audio AAC, but it's disabled for now.

Currently, MP4 writing using the libraries (MP4v2 and GPAC) is broken, so the only way to get a working encode is to use the binary encoding mode. This option can be set via the main menu->Preferences. I’ve included an updated version of x264.pkg from ⌘-Q Builds if you don’t already have an x264 binary on your machine. There are a few drawbacks to using x264 directly, among them being:
- Raw YUV/YUV4MPEG input only
- No encoding preview

Check out the website at http://xdot.command-q.org, follow development on the ⌘-Q Blog, read more at the Qiki, or discuss X● on our forums.

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Check out the website at http://xdot.command-q.org, follow development on the ⌘-Q Blog, read more at the Qiki, or discuss X● on our forums.

Why doesn't PHPBB support quotes in URL :| Fixed.

[Qyot27]

Looks sexy. Too bad I don't have Leopard (or use OS X much at all, either). But if I do ever buy a Mac for myself, I know where to look.

Is it going to be just for x264, or are other encoders planned once it reaches maturity? The comparison to MeGUI is what sparked that comment.

As well, is there/will there be an option, like MeGUI has, to update the x264 binary and or GUI internally?

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Looks sexy. Too bad I don't have Leopard (or use OS X much at all, either). But if I do ever buy a Mac for myself, I know where to look.

Keep an eye on this, too. It might be out by the time you get one – it's my next project.

Is it going to be just for x264, or are other encoders planned once it reaches maturity? The comparison to MeGUI is what sparked that comment.

Probably. Hence the name. MPEG-4 ASP is too obsolete.

As well, is there/will there be an option, like MeGUI has, to update the x264 binary and or GUI internally?

If you're encoding using the binary option, it's just using a binary on your system, so you can use any binary. I even have a builds system set up to run every night that provides x264 as well as a bunch of other projects (it hasn't been updated in awhile though). The same goes with the library, actually, since it's dynamically linked. But Xdot has built in automatic updating, so it shouldn't be necessary. I plan to update it for each new revision.

[kmv]

As us Mac users know, there are no insanely great x264 GUIs available to us. Handbrake comes the closest

Avidemux doesn't suck, and neither does MPEG Streamclip (although that uses the Apple encoder).

Enter X●

It looks good, I will check it out. Does it do any track management one the mp4's? I often find myself adding extra language tracks (for audio commentaries and the like) via mp4box.

[Tab.]

It looks good, I will check it out. Does it do any track management one the mp4's? I often find myself adding extra language tracks (for audio commentaries and the like) via mp4box.

So far only video is supported since it's so early on. Eventually audio will be supported, and I don't see why multiple tracks wouldn't be possible, or even Timed Text subs.

[Kionon]

As us Mac users know, there are no insanely great x264 GUIs available to us. Handbrake comes the closest

Avidemux doesn't suck, and neither does MPEG Streamclip (although that uses the Apple encoder).

The latter has failed me on all my machines recently. It spits out garbage.... When it encodes at all!

[Tab.]

As us Mac users know, there are no insanely great x264 GUIs available to us. Handbrake comes the closest

Avidemux doesn't suck, and neither does MPEG Streamclip (although that uses the Apple encoder).

The latter has failed me on all my machines recently. It spits out garbage.... When it encodes at all!

And AviDemux has an absolutely terrible interface. Just sayin'.

Pre-alpha 4 coming tonight with lots of fixes.

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Pre-alpha 4 is out! Big changes:
- Various fixes to binary encoding
- Encoding range support
- Zone support
- Size calculation (finally!)
- Preset saving/loading/editing
- All tables now work as expected, and most are editable directly.
- Ranges and floats should now work in text boxes, our range control was majorly borked (though for now there is no range checking, so don’t enter bogus values!)
- Full MP4v2 metadata support. X● now supports every meta tag that libmp4v2 can mux, and they are all correctly written!

Of course, get it at xdot.command-q.org.

[Tab.]

I've worked all night to bring you all a surprise beta of X●! But first, I should explain some things.

This isn't the beta I was planning – that is, the libraries are still as broken as they were before. However, X● is now perfectly functional using the binaries, and as such, I've repurposed our 1.0 release to require feature-completion for binary encoding, relegating the library encoding to a future version.

That said, what's included in our biggest update yet? The full changelog is, as always, available url=http://xdot.command-q.org/changelog.txt]here[/url], but how about a summary?

First, audio encoding using Core Audio. X● can now encode your audio to AAC. Second, universal input for binary mode using MPlayer. And a bunch more, including:
- Multipass
- MP4 tags for binary encoding
- Subtitle muxing
- Image scaling using FFMPEG with SWScaler
- Rudimentary progress reporting

Furthermore, the support packages have been consolidated into one package with everything you need to run X●, so you won't have to go through three different installations.

There are tons of other minor tweaks and fixes, but those are the big ones.

So please, be sure to hit up the website and check it out!

-Mike

Now to get an hour of sleep before class...