Generic FFMPEG for -> 720p conversion

[jglazer63]

Does anyone have a good/favorite command line for converting most videos (720p to 1080p) to 720p with decent compression and reasonable quality? I have been experimenting with a number of them but can't get good compression.

Thanks!

[ProWo]

It's easyer to get a GUI, g.e. clever Ffmpeg-GUI. Load your file, select video conversion, select change frame size without crop, continue, set x264 as encoder, crf 21, set the frame size you want, g.e. 1280x720, set the desired AR, g.e. 16:9, click on convert. After the conversion mux with Audio/Sub of your Sourcefile. Done.

[codehound]

Does anyone have a good/favorite command line for converting most videos (720p to 1080p) to 720p with decent compression and reasonable quality? I have been experimenting with a number of them but can't get good compression.

Thanks!

Talking in generic terms, as you have asked for, if time is not critical, a slower preset will achieve better compression. (In most cases).

Someone will come on shortly though and give 2 rare scenarios where this is not the case though, under special circumstances with crf ; )

See section 2 - Medium is the default if no preset is specified in your syntax.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

[Sharc]

Generic question - generic answer:

ffmpeg.exe -i "your.source" -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -vf scale=1280:720 -c:a aac -b:a 128K "out.mp4"

[abolibibelot]

It also highly depends on the type of footage. When using quality based settings (i.e. not a target average bitrate), the encoder analyses the actual content of each frame (or group of frames) and determines the required bitrate to achieve a given level of quality preservation. This can vary wildly, between for instance a steady shot of a lecturer talking in a well lit room, and a sword fight at night in a forest during a snow storm shot on grainy film ; with the same settings, at the same 1280x720 resolution, the first video may compress to ~800kbps and look very good indeed, while the second one would require ~6000kbps to retain a similar level of quality ; and conversely, if compressing the second video with a target bitrate of 800kbps, it is bound to look like fighting turds in a storm of liquid poo. (Which might be a worthy idea for an aspiring arthouse film director.)