Batch convert to edit friendly II

[fossfan]

Hello
This thread was closed automatically last year but I think there’s more to say

Batch Convert to Edit-Friendly?

Hello, Long time Shotcut user, first post on the forum. Up until now, I have been able to look up all of my questions and find the answers I needed but I’m not able to find a specific answer for batch converting multiple files to edit-friendly. All of my clips are variable frame rate and must be converted to “edit-friendly” before I start each project. Currently, I pull each clip in to Shotcut, one at a time, which prompts me to convert. This can be very time consuming as some projects contain…

@brian has written above the screenshot there that those settings “should get you the same results” as “convert to edit friendly”, however that is not the case for me.
My main problem is that I get sound crackling if I don’t convert to edit friendly and I’ve tried those settings but the sound crackling remains and also with those settings I have a loss in image quality even if the generated file is bigger than the input.
Of course I would prefer that batch convert to edit friendly existed but because that doesn’t exist I have to do it file by file and Shotcut many times crashes probably when I am trying to convert another clip in the timeline while it is writing a converted clip to the drive. So then I have to start all over again which is time consuming and unreliable.
If the “Export> From> Each playlist item” workaround would function the same, I would settle for that, however it does not get me the same results, the sound crackling remains and there is a loss in quality while the file size is bigger.
Shotcut is great foss and I appreciate its existence however the more video files you want to put together, the more difficult it is to use.
Could there be unmentioned settings that I would have to apply so that I get the actual same result while using "Export> From> Each playlist item?

P.S. I am doing a video conversion prior to using Shotcut because I am using a VR180 conversion software made by Google presumably for standardized editing. Someone pointed out that there is a configuration file there called “index.js” in \resources\app where I could modify a parameter about image stabilization but I don’t know how to interpret it so that maybe I could output fixed framerate with that and I wouldn’t need to convert to TRULY edit friendly in Shotcut anymore. Could anybody interpret if there is a setting in that file and what that setting should be for fixed framerate?
This is for example the Windows archive of that software https://storage.googleapis.com/vr180-creator/download/VR180_Creator_windows_4.0.0.zip

[fossfan]

I can only include 2 links per post
Here is the Linux archive of the VR180 Creator software
https://storage.googleapis.com/vr180-creator/download/VR180_Creator_linux_4.0.0.tar.gz
(the app for some reason works on distros launched in 2018-2019 for mp4 encoding but does not start encoding in newer distros. DNxHR encoding still works on newer distros).
And here are a couple of samples in case someone would want to search for a framerate setting in it and would like to test conversion to fixed framerate, if it is possible.

MediaFire

Anything that would make editing easier in Shotcut would be great, thanks in advance

[brian]

@fossfan

My main problem is that I get sound crackling if I don’t convert to edit friendly and I’ve tried those settings but the sound crackling remains

This is because the export process runs through the Shotcut editing framework (MLT). The MLT framework requires constant frame rate clips due to the need for precise seeking. The Convert process uses a different tool (FFMpeg) for the conversion and processes the source images sequentially to produce the converted file in fixed frame rate. So the batch export trick is not suitable for converting variable frame rate to constant frame rate.

We have been putting off a “Batch Convert” tool because we have in mind to integrate conversion into a more comprehensive project management framework within Shotcut (as mentioned on our Roadmap).

I changed this post to a Suggestion so that we can factor it into our Roadmapping.