Linux – Turn multiple PNG images into a H264 encoded 1280×720 animation for YouTube HD upload

encodinglinuxvideo

I have lots of PNG images:

pic1.png
pic2.png
pic3.png
...

They are all of size 1280×720. I want to turn them into an animation and upload it to YouTube as a HD video. I've heard that H264 is a good format and the MPEG would result in poor quality. But I'm not good at animation formats. 🙂

So. Is there a free command line application I can use to turn these into a H264 animation and what would the command line look like?

Edit: Please see CarlF's comment below. Apparently I'm confused on the formats. 🙂

Best Answer

  • ffmpeg or mencoder can be used to create videos out of image sequences. I found this tutorial on it after a quick google. Their codecs are (mostly) built-in. The apps work on Windows, Mac and Linux.
  • VirtualDub will allow you to import PNG image sequences, and encode them into videos. If you have the right codecs installed you can create H.264 files. You will need a separate application to convert it into the MP4 container. It does provide a command-line application. VDub is Windows-only.

And please don't forget that YouTube is in the habit of re-encoding its videos even if they're in the right format, so regardless you may just lose quality anyway. Thankfully it's not too much for live-action videos, but videos like 2D animations (anime, cartoons and the like) do suffer.

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