intermediate
4h · 3 lessons
FFmpeg Compression, End to End
Understand what every encoding knob actually costs you.
A working engineer's tour of H.264/H.265 compression with FFmpeg: rate control, presets, keyframes, filtering and the delivery ladder. Every lesson ships the exact commands, sample media and an A/B comparison so you can see the tradeoff rather than take it on faith.
What you'll be able to do
- Choose between CRF, ABR and CBR with a reason you can defend
- Read an ffprobe report and spot what is wrong with a file
- Build a multi-rendition HLS ladder that actually switches cleanly
- Cut encode times without giving away visible quality
Before you start
- Comfortable in a terminal
- FFmpeg 6.x installed locally
Course contents
Rate control fundamentals
What the encoder is actually deciding, and which flag decides it.
-
CRF vs. target bitrate
The single most misunderstood choice in the whole pipeline.
Free preview lab -
Presets: buying quality with time
What -preset actually changes, and where the curve goes flat.
video
Delivery and the HLS ladder
Turning one master into something a player can adapt to.
-
Building a three-rung HLS ladder
Aligned keyframes, sane segment length, one master playlist.
lab