That's a Windows app. I run on Apple equipment.
LosslessCut and Avidemux are 2 options for macOS. Or even straight Ffmpeg.
I'm not looking for a video editing GUI. I'm looking for a SINGLE button I press that does what I want.
I am currently hacking an ffmpeg+handbrakeCLI bash script to do this, but honestly I'm getting too old for this $%^. I'd rather just pay someone to do it than waste hours of my limited remaining life fighting various conventions and trying to figure out how to force a command-line to do what I want.
In that case, there are several online marketplaces where you can solicit a developer to write your software for you if you don't wish to do it yourself.
Our take has been: 1) mpeg2 is already on its way out, and 2) disk space is cheap and only getting cheaper
Personally, I can't even get any mpeg2 content anymore. Cox converted all my PRIME channels, including locals, to h264. And my CONNECT picks up ATSC3 stations only which aren't mpeg2 either.
I'm curious what your motivation is here.. are you running out of disk space?
For me the single most important motivation is to be able to create content for my iPad for cases where I don't have network connectivity; most commonly: flying, and traveling to locations where internet may not be very good.
Others, of course, may have different use cases.
Okay, but you can do that with mpeg2 and using the new Downloads feature.
But maybe you're tight on disk space on your iPad?
That might be good enough (though being able to play "natively" on iPad, rather than forcing CPU for MPG2, thus saving battery is more to me than storage space).
More important is: is Downloads out of beta? You were talking about it a year ago, but in my iPad version, 5.1.1, I still see no way to perform a download. There's nothing that says "Download" to me in the popup menu, which is where I would expect it to be, and the only web references I can find are comments about the beta a year or two ago.
Testflight Beta
Ah, I see. You have hooked up Downloads for TV series, but not for movies!
Which is a nice start, but does not do what I want which is more on the movie side...
The downloads feature was added last month. It works with movies and tv shows.
When I long click on a TV show (in the Recently Updated section) I get a menu that includes Download.
I do not get this menu if I click anywhere else - not on TV Shows in "Up Next", not on items in "Continue Watching", and not in "Recently Added Movies".
Given what you say, I assume this is just a silly UI oversight bug?
It does show up for me.
Maybe you already selected download.. that's the only reason it wouldn't appear.
Click the download icon at the top right of Library to check.
May be a bug on iPad then.
What if you do a regular tap on the movie and hit More
Same deal. Nothing about Download there.
So I agree this is a good initial solution once the UI bugs are cleaned up. (There is a similar wart -- design or bug? -- in that individual episodes of a show cannot be downloaded...)
Transcoding to 264or 265 (for battery life) would be a very nice next step, but I can live with MPG2 downloads as better than nothing.
I didn't know that downloads were released in v5.1.1 !
No mention of it in the release notes https://getchannels.com/releases/#ios
I would think it would show as a new feature
Downloads are in beta only. If you're using v5.1.1 then that's the issue. Downloads appearing there are a bug and the feature was not complete when that version was released.
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Righto! Thanks for all the info. I'll wait till the feature is non-beta and give it a whirl.
Fortunately travel is somewhat suspended right now...