[FFmpeg-user] Poor quality output when converting avi to mp4

[Reindl Harald]

Am 24.07.2017 um 20:26 schrieb Ute Willmore:
> I am hoping someone on this list can help me with a problem I am having
> when converting a .avi video to .mp4 using FFmpeg. The output I get starts
> out looking good, but then degrades and by the time the 18 second video
> finishes it is hard to recognize what's on the screen. The colors are all
> off, some areas are just single color blobs where there used to be trees.
> 
> I am really hoping someone here will be able to help.
> 
> I have the latest version 20170718-012620a of ffmpeg. This is the static 64
> bit version for Windows running on Windows 10 Pro.
> 
> I started out using the following command to convert the video:
> 
> ffmpeg  -v verbose -i hd.avi -vf scale=640:480 scaledoutput.mp4

without a bitrate param the results are poor because of ridiculous low 
bitrate defaults, at least that was the case many years ago as we 
implemented our php-wrapper