04/21/14 19:00:14 ¶ ●

Things I Learned From `ffmpeg`

Recently a friend had issues playing particular video files with his Plex media center. I told him to send me the files and I’ll have a look at them. I also have some experience with the command line utility and would like to share some things I learned along the way.

• I wrote previously about ffmpeg's “-acodec copy -vcodec copy" option. Apparently there is a shorter version "codec copy”, which copies both streams without reencoding.
• Copying the stream, either via -acodec copy -vcodec copy or codec copy does the job for nearly 90% of my video encodings. I recently updated all my videos to a format iTunes Mavericks in 64-bit mode (AVFoundation) would understand. Copying the streams worked in most cases. Also all downloads from YouTube or Vimeo convert wonderfully.
• You can actually shorten the command to ffmpeg -i movie.avi movie.mp4 to convert straight from AVI to MPEG4.
• youtube-dl and jDownloader are two really useful tools.
• That said, tools like MediaInfo and Invisor make your life as video pro a lot easier. Both base on MediaInfo, and there is a CLI available for MediaInfo.
• ffmpeg had a -sameq option, which some users made believe it means “same quality, but it’s not. It means "same quantizers", which is something totally different.
• To actually convert something using 1:1 quality use the -qscale 0 option (which the CLI recommends when you accidentally invoke sameq).
• The current default to try is: ffmpeg -y -i movie.avi -codec copy movie.mp4. Then I’d suggest using something else.
• If CLI is to hard to use for you, use VLC directly or use an alternative app, that is much easier to use, like HandBrake.