Best ffmpeg settings to use...

[jeffshead]

I recently replaced an Android TV box with a NVIDIA Shield TV. Kodi 17.6 has issues on the Shield 7.2.2 so I installed Kodi 18. That fixed the original issues but now none of my AVI's will play unless I change the Kodi settings to eliminate HW acceleration. That of course causes issues with other file types.

I have used a few different "AVI fixer" apps which found no issues with my AVI files and I have even changed the container to MKV. That did not help. The files are old and someone suggested that GMC2 / QPel may be the problem. I have come to the conclusion that the only option is to re-encode them. I believe the older versions of Kodi automatically turned off HW acceleration for files smaller than 800 pixels wide but Kodi 18 does not do this. I went out and bought a GeForce GTX 1060 card and used ffmpeg but the resulting files are almost twice as large as the originals and I see a degrade in quality. Below is the command line I used:

for /R %%I in (*.avi) do ffmpeg -i "%%I" -c:v hevc_nvenc -preset slow -cq 18 -g 150 -c:a aac -b:a 160k "%%~nI.mkv" & echo del "%%I"

There must be a happy compromise. Can someone please suggest some other commands or software and settings for me to try? There must be a way to see little to no quality loss converting to h.265 without increasing the file size, isn't there?

Below is a link to one of the hundreds of files I want to convert:

AVI file (135 MB):
https://filebin.net/b83fiziyyz9jc6l9

MediaInfo:

General
Complete name                            : C:\1.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
File size                                : 136 MiB
Duration                                 : 22 min 26 s
Overall bit rate                         : 845 kb/s
Writing application                      : VirtualDubMod 1.5.1.1a (build 1639/release)
Writing library                          : VirtualDubMod build 1639/release

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Advanced Simple@L3
Format settings                          : GMC2 / QPel
Format settings, BVOP                    : No
Format settings, QPel                    : Yes
Format settings, GMC                     : 2 warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (H.263)
Codec ID                                 : XVID
Codec ID/Hint                            : XviD
Duration                                 : 22 min 26 s
Bit rate                                 : 643 kb/s
Width                                    : 640 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.087
Stream size                              : 103 MiB (76%)
Writing library                          : XviD 0.0.09 (UTC 2003-03-25)

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG Audio
Format version                           : Version 1
Format profile                           : Layer 3
Format settings                          : Joint stereo / MS Stereo
Codec ID                                 : 55
Codec ID/Hint                            : MP3
Duration                                 : 22 min 26 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 30.8 MiB (23%)
Alignment                                : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 42  ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration             : 464  ms

I have many files so I thought using hevc_nvenc would be the best option.

[pandy]

Below something that worked for h.264 - try to match similar for hevc - have no NVidia hardware thus unable to help you more. Consult with latest NVidia NVenc recommendations, also remember to upgrade driver to newest possible version.

@ffmpeg.exe -hide_banner -v 32 -stats -y -i "%filename%" -vf %vproc% -c:v h264_nvenc -level:v 4.0 -preset:v hq -profile:v high -cq %vq% -qmin:v 8 -qmax:v 29 -bufsize:v 10000k -maxrate:v 20000k -g 250 -bf 3 -refs:v 3 -rc:v vbr_hq -rc-lookahead 32 -b_adapt 1 -temporal-aq 1 -spatial-aq 1 -i_qfactor 0.75 -b_qfactor 1.1 -coder:v cabac -bluray-compat 1 -aud 1 -aq-strength 8 -af %aproc% -c:a ac3 -b:a %ab%k "%~n1_delogdaudnv.mkv"

[cajon]

try testing with only converting the audio to aac, and copy the video track into an mp4 container