ffmpeg target ntsc-dvd bitrate-setting (-b) not working

[Reuben Martin]

If you must have your bitrate exactly at 8000k, you would have to do 2 pass encoding. FFmpeg won’t use that full 8000k when it doesn’t need to. It would just be a waste of space without any quality benefit.

If you want high quality, setting bitrate is a poor way to achieve that. There are many other settings with far bigger influence on quality than bitrate. I would leave the bitrate setting out entirely unless you are having to meet hardware requirements of some sort.

If you are trying to get higher quality, try something like

ffmpeg -i sourcefile.mov -target pal-dvd -qscale 2 -trellis 2 outputfile.mpg


[Kurt Kocher]

Thanks alot Reuben.

I used “-qscale 1 -trellis 2” and get much better results.

Do you have a link or any tipps on where I can find rersources on how to get the quality even higher with -target dvd?

[Reuben Martin]

Besides those 2 options, most other settings available to up the quality for mpeg2 have to do with motion detection. Although one other thing that can improve quality quite significantly is to flag the codec to use an interlaced DCT if your original source happens to be interlaced. (If your source is interlaced and you don’t force the codec to respect that, it can smear the video)

A quick place to start would be here:
FFMPEG FAQ

You can use that as a starting place for options to look up and see what they do, and how you might what to deviate from the standard setting, in the general codec documentation.

[Lou Logan]

[Reuben Martin] “ffmpeg -i sourcefile.mov -target pal-dvd -qscale 2 -trellis 2 outputfile.mpg”

Using “-qscale:v” instead of “-qscale” will remove any ambiguity issues since this option can be used for audio or video (encoder dependent).

[Steven Wilson]

I have been struggling with the -b and format options, and this is the only thing that seems to produce a noticeably higher quality result (or any change whatsoever…) Thanks!