FFmpeg for Adaptive Bitrate Production

About this course

This course will teach you how to produce high-quality video with H.264, HEVC, and VP9 with FFmpeg and how to create fully packaged HLS and DASH adaptive bitrate output. You'll become proficient in FFmpeg and will learn the key fundamentals of video compression, encoding, and adaptive bitrate packaging. The course includes downloadable batch files to accelerate learning and production with PDFs of all lesson files for printing and note-taking. It also includes a free PDF copy of my book, Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (2018 Edition), a $34.95 value (check it out on Amazon). The course starts with the technology primer that covers the basics of compression and encoding. Then it details how to install FFmpeg on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers and provides an overview of batch operation on those platforms. The next section covers generic file configuration options you'll use for all codecs, including lessons on bitrate control, resolution, frame rate, I-, B-, P- and reference-frame settings. These are followed by lessons on H.264 and HLS, including instructions on how to use Bento4 to package for DASH and HLS.  The next sections detail how to encode and package with HEVC and how to encode with VP9. The final section details how to use line continuation characters in your FFmpeg scripts and concludes with a lesson on live encoding with H.264.

Course objectives

• to teach fundamentals of video compression and encoding
• to provide hands-on experience with FFmpeg
• to guide through the process of packaging adaptive bitrate video outputs