FFMPEG Batch Compress Parallel

compress_mp4_directory.sh

#!/bin/bash
# A script to batch-compress MP4 files in parallel using GNU Parallel

# Create a directory for the output files if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p compressed

echo "Starting parallel processing..."

# Find all .mp4 files and pipe them to GNU Parallel to run ffmpeg jobs simultaneously
# --bar shows a progress bar
# {} is the placeholder for the input file (e.g., video.mp4)
# {/.} is the placeholder for the basename of the file without its extension (e.g., video)
find . -maxdepth 1 -name "*.mp4" | parallel --bar ffmpeg -n -i {} \
    -c:v libx264 \
    -crf 28 \
    -preset medium \
    -c:a aac \
    -b:a 128k \
    "compressed/{/.}_compressed.mp4"

echo "Batch processing complete."