Body: <p>I know about presets but faster presets lose the video quality. Are there any hardware requirements I need to consider? Or are there any settings that I need to tweak? And lastly where do I place the <code>-threads</code> flag to encode video (before input or after input), I saw topics on thread but they were confusing.</p>
  
  <p>This is the command I am using now:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ffmpeg -i input.mp4 \
              -codec:v libx264 -tune zerolatency -profile:v main -preset medium -crf 23 -maxrate 1000k -bufsize 10000k -s hd720 -codec:a libfdk_aac -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -threads 4 highoutput.mp4 \
              -codec:v libx264 -tune zerolatency -profile:v main -preset medium -crf 23 -maxrate 500k -bufsize 5000k -s hd480 -codec:a libfdk_aac -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -threads 4 lowoutput.mp4
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Your help and guidance will be very much appreciated. Thank you.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-15T13:49:51.500Z
Comments.Text: Faster presets do less work to come up with the same quality if you're using Constant Rate Factor (-crf). So AFAIK the trade-off isn't less quality, but bigger files.
Comments.UserDisplayName: stib
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-15T16:52:55.233Z
Comments.Text: @stib Is there any way to maintain the bitrate?
Comments.UserDisplayName: Robin
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-15T20:13:03.680Z
Comments.Text: Doesn't using `-crf` override any bitrate options on the command line? I seem to recall that being the case.
Comments.UserDisplayName: WineSoaked
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-16T09:58:38.057Z
Comments.Text: @WineSoaked Is it? I saw  this [post](http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#CRFwithmaximumbitrate) telling me otherwise.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Robin
Tags: <video><ffmpeg><encoding><transcoding><recommendation>
Title: Fast encoding with ffmpeg
UserDisplayName: Robin
ThreadText: # Fast encoding with ffmpeg
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-13)
  
  I know about presets but faster presets lose the video quality. Are there any hardware requirements I need to consider? Or are there any settings that I need to tweak? And lastly where do I place the `-threads` flag to encode video (before input or after input), I saw topics on thread but they were confusing.
  
  This is the command I am using now:
  
  ```
  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 \
              -codec:v libx264 -tune zerolatency -profile:v main -preset medium -crf 23 -maxrate 1000k -bufsize 10000k -s hd720 -codec:a libfdk_aac -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -threads 4 highoutput.mp4 \
              -codec:v libx264 -tune zerolatency -profile:v main -preset medium -crf 23 -maxrate 500k -bufsize 5000k -s hd480 -codec:a libfdk_aac -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart -threads 4 lowoutput.mp4
  
  ```
  
  Your help and guidance will be very much appreciated. Thank you.
  
  **Tags:** video, ffmpeg, encoding, transcoding, recommendation
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Faster presets do less work to come up with the same quality if you're using Constant Rate Factor (-crf). So AFAIK the trade-off isn't less quality, but bigger files.  
  > **username_0**: @username_1 Is there any way to maintain the bitrate?  
  > **username_2**: Doesn't using `-crf` override any bitrate options on the command line? I seem to recall that being the case.  
  > **username_0**: @username_2 Is it? I saw  this [post](http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#CRFwithmaximumbitrate) telling me otherwise.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 0 answers
  
  