Videos converted with FFMPEG do not retain orignal quality

[kyonides]

Hi guys!

Long time no see. Well, today I have to ask for help because every single time I use ffmpeg to convert an AVI file to a MP4 file or a WMV one to a MP4 one, etc., I always get a new video file that has a poor quality, instead of watching fine and detailed images on screen I end up hating all those squared boxes that show up on every single frame that distort the images. The thing is that this happens even if I do not make changes to the width, height, frame rate or anything besides the codec in use and the file extension.

What could be causing this distortion? Is there any way to prevent ffmpeg from distorting the video?

OS: Kubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04

[vinnywright]

show the line you using .
have you tried just a simple convert with no options,ffmpeg will try to pick sane defaults .....like

ffmpeg -i file.avi file.mp4

VINNY

[kyonides]

It didn't work. Any other ideas?

[HalationEffect]

It would be useful to know the exact syntax of the command you used to do the conversion.

Keep in mind that you should expect to see some loss of quality no matter what you do; you are converting from one lossy format to another, which piles loss upon loss.

[dequire]

This is as close as I've gotten so far to getting ffmpeg to give a semi-reasonable conversion:

ffmpeg -i originalfile.ogv -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -qp 0 -acodec copy newfile.mkv

Not ideal, but usable. Still a a work in progress. You can see the result here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk07S8CS1MI

That's my 1st video. Like I said, I will keep searching for better (lossless) output.

Cheers,
ronnoc

[kyonides]

It's true, there was no way to get a chance to get a better output. Sadly, I'd have to give up, especially after I attempted to remove 1 or 2 audio streams from a video file to no avail, the audio stream of the output file got so corrupted that it sounded horribly, I could not hear any voice or the background music. Perhaps there is something about my PC that corrupts this kind of files while performing a file conversion. Thank you all for your assistance.

[vinnywright]

just a side note currently ffmpeg is only included for backward compatibility (I think) the convertion as of now should be done with avconv from the "libav-tools" package.

that sead you can compile your own ffmpeg , something on that hear https://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/...mpilationGuide

good luck

VINNY

[dequire]

Hi guys!

Long time no see. Well, today I have to ask for help because every single time I use ffmpeg to convert an AVI file to a MP4 file or a WMV one to a MP4 one, etc., I always get a new video file that has a poor quality, instead of watching fine and detailed images on screen I end up hating all those squared boxes that show up on every single frame that distort the images. The thing is that this happens even if I do not make changes to the width, height, frame rate or anything besides the codec in use and the file extension.

What could be causing this distortion? Is there any way to prevent ffmpeg from distorting the video?

OS: Kubuntu Precise Pangolin 12.04

The other question I forgot to ask is is you were recording games or desktop sessions, as how you record them would differ depending on the type of recording.