I am trying to create several downgraded versions of a video file with ffmpeg. I am using the following command via the command line (the command is taken from the documentation):
ffmpeg -i ../../tos.avi -b:v 500k tos_500k.avi
I am trying this with several values below 2000 kbps (down to ~125 kbps), however the bottom limit that gets actually produced when I check the generated video files is at about 2000 kbps. I am checking the values using the software videospec.
- Does anyone have an idea why reducing the bitrate further doesn't seem to have any effect?
- Can you give me a hint how I can effectively reduce the bitrate of a video to a given level?
[EDIT] To be a bit more precise, my original video has a resolution of 1920x1080 with a bitrate of about 15 Mbps. When using the above command, I am able to downgrade it without issues to larger bitrates such as 8000, 5000, down to 2000 kbps. However, anything below 2000 doesn't seem to get handled, resulting output files are always stuck at a bitrate of a bit over 2000 kbps. (The file size is also very close to the file that was successfully downgraded to 2000 kbps.)