Title: Change ffmpeg settings / encoding parameters Last modified: August 21, 2016 --- # Change ffmpeg settings / encoding parameters * [jenkisan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenkisan/) * (@jenkisan) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/) * Kylie, first off, amazing plugin. Truly. It does everything I need in one plugin. * The question I have is simple: I need to change the ffmpeg settings for the various encoding formats because the results are not very good. I uploaded a 10mb mp4 files 720 and encoded into 480 and it became 28mb šŸ™‚ Iā€™m sure nothing a little tinkering can help. * Thanks. * [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/) Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) * Thread Starter [jenkisan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenkisan/) * (@jenkisan) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945893) * Figured it out. I now encode way faster with decent settings. Thanks. * OPen the main plugin php file and around line 2790. Careful. This is only for who knows php. Make a copy of the file first! * Plugin Author [Kyle Gilman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kylegilman/) * (@kylegilman) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945900) * Can you post the revised FFMPEG settings youā€™re using? * [ppehrson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ppehrson/) * (@ppehrson) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945911) * Kyle, it is a matter of tinkering with quantizing. You need to compress at the right level, but donā€™t you know FFMPEG? šŸ™‚ * The quantizer (in FFMPEG output: Q=20 from the params in your script) should be around 20, which it actually is. It can be played with but I agree you should add a way to choose video quality in the conversion. * Thread Starter [jenkisan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jenkisan/) * (@jenkisan) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945912) * Kyle, I ran some other tests to simplify the settings. * Fundamentally, you need to change three parameters: * 1. the vpre flag needs to change from slow to veryfast 2. threads are a really important part of speed, ideally change it to 0 to use all available threads otherwise run tests using 2, 3, 4 threads. This will increase speed on a shaed hosting dramatically. 3. This is the principal parameter for quality> -crf and it can go from 15 (lossless) to 30 really compress and low quality. I use 24 which yields and excellent size quality ratio. * To make the changes simple (because honestly audio should be adjusted too but lets not go there now) I simplified the changes to adding these: * Line 2787: if ( $options[ā€˜ffmpeg_vpreā€™] == ā€˜onā€™ ) { $vpre_flags = ā€˜-vpre slow- vpre ipod640ā€™; } * Change to: * if ( $options[ā€˜ffmpeg_vpreā€™] == ā€˜onā€™ ) { $vpre_flags = ā€˜-vpre veryfast threads 0 -crf 24ā€™; } * This will execute if you select the vpre switch in settings on the admin side. * Hope this helps. * PS This is for h264. I have not even looked at webm (which presents specific issues for encoding parameters) and ogg. * Plugin Author [Kyle Gilman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kylegilman/) * (@kylegilman) * [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945914) * Thanks for the tips. I set most of the ffmpeg settings almost two years ago and I havenā€™t revisited them much since then. I donā€™t actually use the encoding functions myself (I do all my encoding before I upload) so I donā€™t spend a lot of time thinking about it. * At the time I remember being concerned about monopolizing system resources on a machine that was simultaneously being used as a web server, which is why Iā€™m only using 1 thread. I think I used the ā€œslowā€ vpre because it was supposed to take its time and provide better quality compression. * As far as I can tell the default crf for libx264 is 23. Is there a noticeable difference between 23 and 24? * Iā€™ve always meant to allow users to modify encoding settings but I kept forgetting to do it. Itā€™s on my list now and it will be pretty simple to implement. Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total) The topic ā€˜Change ffmpeg settings / encoding parametersā€™ is closed to new replies. * ![](https://ps.w.org/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/assets/icon.svg?rev=2965979) * [Videopack](https://wordpress.org/plugins/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/video-embed-thumbnail-generator/reviews/) * 5 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [Kyle Gilman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/kylegilman/) * Last activity: [12 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-ffmpeg-settings-encoding-parameters/#post-3945914) * Status: not resolved