Look for:

"You want to watch it?"

Always check your file headers after a conversion. Use ffprobe Party.Down.S02E01.mp4 to verify that your streams (video, audio, and subtitles) are exactly where they should be.

: Reduce file sizes for easier storage or streaming.

The episode started. Steve Guttenberg stood in his mansion. The audio was crisp, the video smooth. No desync. No weird stretching.

Note: Hardware encoders are faster but larger at equivalent quality.

"Depends on how many passes."

"Okay," I muttered. "I’m going to remux it. I’m going to take the video, keep it as is, but convert the audio to something the console won't have a seizure over. AAC stereo."

"Dude, it’s just buffering," Marcus said, pacing behind me. "I need to see the vintage car episode. It’s the funniest one."

I modified the command. -vf "pad=width=624:height=354:x=0:y=0:color=black" . I was padding the video with a single pixel of blackness to trick the encoder into compliance. It was a hack. It was ugly. But it was necessary.

: Converting high-bitrate files into formats compatible with home media servers like Plex.

I typed ffmpeg -i . The terminal vomited a stream of metadata. It confirmed my fears: Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 , Stream #0:1: Audio: ac3 .