GUI for multiple programs.

[Black5Lion]

I'll start off by saying I have zero experience programming aside from a bit of BASIC at school.

Now a little back story, I've been encoding stuff for archiving. I start off with VidCoder, to encode videos in x265 HEVC, with my desired bitrate, then I open the original files in foobar2000 to encode/convert the audio to Opus. After that I open the encoded x265 video + Opus audio + two separate srt subtitle files in MKVMerge, and change any necessary settings (audio delay/subtitle language/etc.). Finally I hit add job to queue so can later mux multiple stuff at once.

What I'd like to have is a GUI that would allow me automate all of those, or at least most of them. I'm thinking something with 3 blank items:
1- The original video file
2- English subtitle file
3- other language subtitle file
I'd just have to add the 3 items and it would do the rest for me (send to vidcoder and encode video in x265-send to foobar2000 and encode to opus-send results to mkvmerge-add the first subtitle file and change language to English- add the second subtitle file and change the language to whatever I predetermined).

Can I make something like this with Visual Basic? Like make the GUI as a normal program and the "DO" button would just launch a script that handled the rest of it? Also how would I write such a script? Could it be a simple .bat file? (like vidcoder.exe add-file x encode with present y Then foobar2000.exe add-file x encode with present z Then mkvmerge.exe add-file.. blah blah)

 

[cyclone3d]

If all of those programs support command line options to do what you want, then you can just use a .bat file.

 

[Black5Lion]

If all of those programs support command line options to do what you want, then you can just use a .bat file.

I'm pretty sure I could replace VidCoder with HandBrakeCLI, and mkvmerge is actually a command line tool with a gui. Don't know about foobar2000 though
Anyhow, I'm really a noob at this, how do I write a .bat file? I've only "written" ones by copying and pasting commands others made in notepad then changing the extension to .bat.

I'd prefer a GUI though. Can I make a GUI that would take the files I pick and substitute them in the .bat file?

For example The .bat file would have something like: (HandbrakeCLI.exe -i X -o Y --present="SuperAwesomex265") and the GUI would let me pick a source file and destination file then put them in X and Y before running the .bat file.

Another thing is queuing, before even going into queuing how would I tell it to run foobar200 when handbrakecli is finished and mkvmerge when both are finished?

 

[Black5Lion]

Ok I've spent the last few hours missing around with this and I got nowhere
I can't get foobar2000 to work in CLI, and opusenc won't encode mp3s and needs to have the audio files in the same directory.
I guess now I'll just encode videos in VidCoder without audio, and encode audio in foobar2000. and make a GUI for mkvmerge that applies my settings to the outputs. Should still save a fair amount of time

 

[cyclone3d]

Since you don't have any programming experience, I think the easiest thing for you to use to make a GUI for this would be AutoIT script.

https://www.autoitscript.com/site/

There are a bunch of examples, but you will most likely end up having to read through some of the documentation as well as do some experimenting.

 

[Black5Lion]

Since you don't have any programming experience, I think the easiest thing for you to use to make a GUI for this would be AutoIT script.

https://www.autoitscript.com/site/

There are a bunch of examples, but you will most likely end up having to read through some of the documentation as well as do some experimenting.

Thanks!
I'll check that out once I'm back from school.