How do I specify baseline H264 profile using FFmbc? I am using FFmbc (a FFmpeg derivative) to transcode some video files to H264 (in a mov wrapper).

I want to specify baseline profile (to reduce CPU usage) but can't figure out how.
There doesn't seem to be a simple option to specify this - I understand the profile is derived from whatever options I have specified.

However most examples are for FFmpeg and FFmbc rejects them.

The suggestion to use "-flags2 +bpyramid+wpred+mixed_refs-dct8x8" gives the errors:

[NULL @ 0x101093600] [Eval @ 0x7fff5fbfce20] Undefined constant or missing '(' in 'bpyramid'
[NULL @ 0x101093600] Unable to parse option value "bpyramid+wpred+mixed_refs-dct8x8"
[NULL @ 0x101093600] Error setting option flags2 to value +bpyramid+wpred+mixed_refs-dct8x8.


What am I missing here?
Note: This is for recent FFmpeg, not FFmbc, which doesn't use the same option syntax (yet)


You need to use the -profile:v option, which has been introduced in FFmpeg 0.9 (afaik) and is now standard in 1.0.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -preset fast -profile:v baseline out.mov


Why? -profile was used (and prioritized) for AAC encoding. It's simply ambiguous, therefore you need the stream specfier :v.