[FFmpeg-user] Convert MOV to some lossless format.

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

A Commuter <acommuter <at> hotmail.com> writes:

> I've tried mov to mpg with no arguments, and my source, 95 MB turned into an
> output of 5MB. The quality looks a little grainy. FYI. Only a 32 second video
> if you're wondering. 
> 
> I used this: ffmpeg -i in.mov out.mpg

If you are only interested in quality, use:
ffmpeg -i in.mov -qscale 2 -ab 256k out.mpg

This is not lossless, but your applications that seem to have troubles with many
standard formats will probably not play any lossless format.
I don't think anybody can distinguish the result of above command from the
original (except with software).

If your dvd authoring application does not do any re-encoding, above line
unfortunately will usually not work because the resulting bitrate will be too
high for DVD, try -target dvd (and multipass) in that case.

> I think I need to specify yuv444p instead of ffmpeg auto-selecting yuv420.

Nearly all real-world video is yuv420 as is your input video (see the output of
ffmpeg -i MVI_0028.MOV, the "j" in yuv420p only affects the colour dynamics).

I also believe it is not (easily) possible to put yuv444 into mpg.

Carl Eugen