H.264 Converter?
AphexDreamer
I'm looking for a program that will convert any video format into H.264 in 720P or 1080P. I used to have a very good one, but that was a while back and I...
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TechPowerUp Forums
why not make it look better.....I know its not going to bring perfection to it, but it might correct pixel imperfections.... Just what I hope for, anyway...

because all upscaling does is stretch to fit. I mean yeah, this may work better than some other solutions (software or hardware with crapass scaling that could look worse) but its not like it makes detail out of nothing... I can see why the MKV codec, as its high quality yet a ton smaller than other codecs... but i cant see why you'd change res? its like getting a 128Kb MP3, burning it to CD and ripping it to 320Kb - no matter what it may say, its still only 128Kb.

MeGUI and Staxrip are good GUI for the x264 CLI codec. This will give you much better quality and performance since most others will use the VFW codecs, which are always outdated compared to CLI codecs.

I have used Mediacoder before and it can do a lot of things with all its features and it uses CLI codecs as well but I didn't stay with it very long since after some time the file size for Mediacoder's installation file got so large that it was annoying having to download so much everytime there was an update... although they did have update packs but it only updated parts of it. Also another annoying thing with Mediacoder was that it was common to get errors/crashes even in stable releases. After problems with Mediacoder I initially just started to just use the x264 cli with batch files but that was getting tedious so I went and looked around and visited the x264 page at http://www.x264.nl/ and the GUIs they mentioned on their page was MeGUI and Staxrip. I tested both out and they both seem easy to use and I was getting better video quality and more options than with Mediacoder and it was just as powerful as using the batch files but way more easier and less time consuming.

MeGUI needs AviSynth installed with decoders to decode the video (Staxrip used another program to decode). Also, updating them isn't so time consuming since you only update what you want and use.

AviSynth comes with lots of filters, which will allow resizing with specific filters to "maintain" quality from upscaling (Any form of resizing will usually have some penalty but the penalty can be kept low with good filters). Visit http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page for Avisynth download and help on using different filters.

If you want everything automated so no advanced options then Staxrip might be better since resizing in Staxrip was easier when I used it.