Next is the preset, -preset:v veryslow, this is a preset of the libx264 encoder, a nice and easy way of controlling the speed of the encode and the compression, you can find more information regarding them here. A good range to work in is 18 - 28, it's entirely up to you on how much or little quality you want.

crf 18 this is the option for Constant Rate Factor, basically this controls the quality of the transcoded video, it ranges from 0 to 51, 0 being lossless and 51 being the absolute worst quality. Next we're telling it which video codec to use -c:v, short for -codec:video and we want to use libx264, which is the encoder for H.264. We're calling FFmpeg and telling it the source input -i, is bigBuckBunny.mp4, this basically just means that that's the video we wish to transcode. In the most basic of explainations, we're calling FFmpeg, telling it to take the video bigBuckBunny.mp4 and convert it into an MP4 file, yes it's already an MP4 so there is actually little use in doing this other than to learn, which is exactly what we're doing so don't worry. Now if you save that, ( following the locations outlined here) and double click the batch file to run it, making sure you've moved the downloaded video into the same location as FFmpeg, it'll convert the video 'bigBuckBunny.mp4' into 'bigBuckBunny-converted.mp4'.īut what's actually happening? I'm sure those of you who dable with FFmpeg will easily understand without me having to explain, but for those who wish to learn more, keep reading. Now lets create a new script: ffmpeg -i bigBuckBunny.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset:v veryslow -c:a aac -b:a 128k bugBuckBunny-converted.mp4 So first off we need a video to convert, any video will do but I'll be using Big Buck Bunnys MP4 video found here, I've actually gone for the 4K version but anything will do, and for the purpose of this guide I've renamed it to 'bigBuckBunny.mp4'.

Since the internet is full of guides for H.264, there's little to no point in me creating another one, instead we'll go through the process of creating a batch file which will give us a multi-use ability to convert any video we want into a high quality, or low quality it's your choice, video file using the H.264 codec, plus some audio, all using FFmpeg. H.264 is a great codec, ofcourse it's been superceeded by it's more powerful brother H.265 but it's still very much in use and certainly will not be going away anytime soon, so there's no reason to abandon it yet.

Ffmpeg h264 codec