Re: transcoding flv to mp4

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 18:58:05 +0200
Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> wrote:

> Celejar:
> > 
> > ffmpeg -i example.flv example.mp4
> > 
> > I find that the above command line reduces the size of the video to
> > about a third of the original, but at the cost of egregious degradation
> > of the video quality.  If I use the 'sameq' option:
> 
> ffmpeg uses a fixed default for geometry (-s) and quality (-sameq,
> -qscale, -vb etc.). You have to set both explicitly if you need anything
> else (which you usually do).

Thanks.  Is there a tutorial for simple transcoding that you can
recommend?  I don't have the time or interest for anything fancy, just
basic transcoding between formats, preserving as much of the quality of
the original as possible.

And shouldn't there be a simple switch or option that does pretty much
that, i.e., "change the format, but keep the size and quality as close
as possible to the original"?

And why on earth is the default behavior to multiply the size by a
factor of four just to retain the same quality?  Is mp4 really such an
inferior format to flv that this is required to retain the level of
quality?

Apologies in advance if these are naive questions, but I know little
about this, and transcoding seems to be a sufficiently complex and
arcane subject that simple web searching will only take one so far.

Celejar
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