Resize and change bitrate with ffmpeg

Question

Noobish question here: I need to lower the quality of a video both by scaling it down and changing its bitrate (as an alternative to watermarking it for a client).

I have tried:

ffmpeg -i input_video.mp4 -vf scale=1200:600 -v:b 10M output_video.mp4

Of course, this is wrong. I guess there is another way to append the bitrate command.

Any help?

Answer 1

Here you go:

ffmpeg -i input_video.mp4 -vf "scale=1200:600" -b:v 10M output_video.mp4

There were two mistakes here:

• -v:b: the bitrate codec(b) and the stream selector(v for video) were swapped
• -vf scale: the filter command should be placed between quotes (you can also use the regular scale option instead: -s 1200x600)