Batch convert keeping folder structure

[Alastair25769111kism]

Hello, 

I'm looking for a way to compress 1000's of video files in the .mp4 format, which is simple enough in a straight forward drag and drop.

However, as these files are all part of premiere projects, I need the folder structures and names of the files to stay the same. All I want is for the file to be compressed and written over in the same location, with no addition to the filename, no new folder, just a simple compress and replace. 

I've tried to do this in Adobe Media Encoder - is this possible? I know I have done it in the past, but it now seems impossible. Any help and direction are gratefully received. 

Thank you

[David Arbor]

If I'm understanding you correctly, yes, this should be possible. There's an option in the AME General prefs called "Increment output file name if file with same name exists." You'll want to disable this to avoid creating a new file with "_1" appended. 

Do you have a way to easily load all of your files in at once? For jobs like this, on Windows I use Voidtools Everything, which is a fantastic piece of software that (once it indexes your entire drive) instantly pulls up any file. Depending on how your files are organized or named, you could quickly pull a list of the thousands of files and then drag them direclty into AME's Queue panel. This saves you from having to navigate through a bunch of folders and pull them into AME one-by-one. You might not want to try to process thousands of videos at once, but hey, give it a whirl and see if AME crashes or not.

You can drag one file in, choose your desired MP4 preset, then drag the other thousands into the Queue panel. This will automatically set the output location to be the same as the source, and the preset of all queued items wil be the one you just selected. As long as you unchecked the pref I mentioned before, you should be good to go.

[Alastair25769111kism]

Hello, Thank you I'll give this a go and let you know if it works. I'm on a Mac but I'll check out Voidtools and see if there's anything similar - I'm not sure exactly what it does... 

[David Arbor]

Unfortuantely, there insn't a version of Everything for macOS. There are other tools that can index an entire drive for instant file access (which is what Everything does). Spotlight does index your files, but it's not as fast and doesn't give you a complete picture of every file on your system. I haven't looked at a similar tool for macOS in a long time, but I used to use Find Any File.