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How to set the video bitrate using FFmpeg

· One min read

Setting up​

First make sure you have FFmpeg installed. Follow this guide if you haven't already:

https://docs.tdarr.io/blog/how-to-install-ffmpeg

Running the CLI​

To set the video bitrate of a stream using FFmpeg, use the -b:v flag. For example, to set the bitrate of the video stream in the example file to 2M, use the following:

ffmpeg -i "C:\Transcode\input.mkv" -map 0 -c copy -c:v libx265 -b:v 2M "C:\Transcode\output.mkv"

To set the bitrate of the video stream to 3M, use the following:

ffmpeg -i "C:\Transcode\input.mkv" -map 0 -c copy -c:v libx265 -b:v 3M "C:\Transcode\output.mkv"

You can automate this process on your files using Tdarr

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Get started using Tdarr transcode automation for free with this link:

https://tdarr.io/download/