h.264 adaptive streaming encoder

Question

I want to automate a transcoding workflow to h.264 in the adaptive streaming containers for HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming and wonder what my options are.

Ideally, there's Expression Encoder Pro with the Expression SDK that I could use to do just that. However, Expression Encoder pro is no longer for sale and the non-pro version can't do h.264.

There are other h.264 encoders, in particular with x264 there's an encoder proper that's gpl-licensed. x264 really just gives a pure stream output without the container though, let alone the adaptive streaming containers I need.

I found one reasonably priced encoder called Sorenson Squeeze that appears to have all I need (and in fact can use x264 for that part of the job), but I wonder if I have other options that make more sense in terms of spending money on licenses.

I already have licenses for Adobe's Media Encoder through Creative Cloud subscriptions, but Media Encoder can't work from the command line and I don't see any support for adaptive streaming with my desired containers.

Does anybody have more ideas?

Answer 1

FFmpeg and/or libav can transcode to h264 and support Smooth Streaming and HLS, and run on the command line. There's a bit of a learning curve (you in practice need to have an understanding of the container formats used, GOP and fragmentation/segmentation) but they do have the features you need.

Answer 2

If your media is on your local machine, and you have small amounts, buying one of the tools you mentioned might be your best bet.

However, if you have lots of media and you store it on the cloud, look at cloud offerings such as Amazon Elastic Transcoder or encoding.com.

That way you get out of the box support for formats like HLS, and you don't need to worry about licensing. it is all included in their pricing which is "per use". No subscription or upfront costs.

Answer 3

For e.g. MPEG-DASH adaptive bitrate content you can use either tools such as x264 + MP4Box, or cloud-services like bitcodin.