Comments on: FFmpeg Quality Comparison

By: Jeff Thompson

Jeff Thompson — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:24:31 +0000

Thanks — fantastic resource! I’m trying to encode video with very hard edges (like graphic rectangles, etc) and don’t want the weird blurry-ness that seems to result. Running at –qscale 1 doesn’t seem to do a whole lot there. Anyone have some suggestions?

By: ffmpeg « cloudovka

ffmpeg « cloudovka — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:33:32 +0000

[…] http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2007/05/24/ffmpeg-quality-comparison/ Advertisement LD_AddCustomAttr(“AdOpt”, “1”); LD_AddCustomAttr(“Origin”, “other”); […]

By: FFMPEG for Steaming – ZaneHooper.com

FFMPEG for Steaming – ZaneHooper.com — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:52:32 +0000

[…] Also, http://www.kilobitspersecond.com/2007/05/24/ffmpeg-quality-comparison/ does a very good job of looking into the different qscale options. […]

By: Donald McLachlan

Donald McLachlan — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:11:32 +0000

I’ve downloaded “Lupe (4k resolution).mp” from youtube. I’m using a script I’m transcoding from h264 to mpeg but varying the qscale from 1 to 31. The script is only at –qscale 10 now, but I got a bizarre step in the resulting filesize at –qscale 7. ie:

crc@crc-fsmanager:~/sageMedia> ls –lat *q*
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 374580661 Dec 9 11:07 Lupe.4kq9.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 389301775 Dec 9 11:02 Lupe.4kq8.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 407061843 Dec 9 10:56 Lupe.4kq7.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 276467924 Dec 9 10:50 Lupe.4kq6.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 309350328 Dec 9 10:45 Lupe.4kq5.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 362690494 Dec 9 10:40 Lupe.4kq4.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 455177388 Dec 9 10:36 Lupe.4kq3.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 663858946 Dec 9 10:31 Lupe.4kq2.mp4
–rw-r–r– 1 crc users 668366746 Dec 9 10:25 Lupe.4kq1.mp4

Any idea why the jump in filesize at –qscale 7?

By: Rakesh Ron

Rakesh Ron — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:05:41 +0000

The code u gave just saved me … thanks a lot :)

ffmpeg –i input.avi –f flv –qscale 5 –r 25 –ar 44100 –ab 96 –s 500x374 output.flv

By: Kastaldi

Kastaldi — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 10:41:11 +0000

Idk if all these infos are still valid today,but seurely this post saves me a lot of headache :) thanks !

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:37:04 +0000

Thanks Kyle. I’m sure it’s possible that the values have changed since I made this post. I’m not convinced my methodology was that great to begin with anyway.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:34:36 +0000

@Daryl: sounds like a great call-to-action. I’d be curious to see the results, too.
Jay: thanks for an excellent post. Is it possible these values have changed since you originally ran this, if ffmpeg has been upgraded since then?

By: note to self: ffmpeg command to encode a video - Kyle D. Skrinak

note to self: ffmpeg command to encode a video - Kyle D. Skrinak — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:20:05 +0000

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By: Encode Flash Video with FFmpeg – linux and other geek divagation

Encode Flash Video with FFmpeg – linux and other geek divagation — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:04:22 +0000

[…] The main options you may want to be aware of are the specification of 480×360. This is to resize your video DOWN to that size. Please alter this as desired! Also good to note is the quality settings. –qscale of 5 is a reasonable setting. […]