ffmpeg conversion increase bitrate

Question

When extracting Audio streams using ffmpeg from containers such as MP4, how does ffmpeg increase bitrate, if it is higher than the source bitrate?

An example might be ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -f mp3 -ab 256000 -vn music.mp3. What does ffmpeg do if the incoming bitrate is 128k? Does it interpolate or default to 128k on the output music.mp3? I know this seems like not a so-called "programming question" but ffmpeg forum says it is going out of business and no one will reply to posts there.

Answer 1

During transcoding, ffmpeg (or any transcoder) decodes the input into an uncompressed version; for audio, that's PCM. The encoder compresses this PCM data. It has no idea of, or interaction with, the original source representation.

If no output bitrate is specified, ffmpeg will use the default rate control mode and bitrate of the encoder. For MP3 or AAC, that's typically 128 kbps for a stereo output . Although it can be lower, like 96 kbps for Opus. Encoders typically adjust based on no. of output channels. So for a 6-ch output, it may be 320 kbps. If a bitrate is specified, that's used unless the value is invalid (beyond the encoder's range). In which case, the encoder will fallback on its default bitrate selection.