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Table of Contents
VP8
Notes
Both VP8 and VP9 are a bit confusing on how to get good encodes related to specific levels of quality, when using the documentation and vpxenc help output as references.
In it's simplest approach, if using vpxenc, use max-q as the target CRF – the encoder won't drop quality below that level (starts at 0, ends at 63).
For ffmpeg, use -crf with your number and -b:v 0 is required.
For HandBrake, use -q with your CRF. I can't tell from docs or the code if it's passing anything about min-q and max-q to the encoder, but I don't think it is. I think it's using libavcodec to do crf=X and then b:v of 0.
Encoding Quality
With the defaults, vpxenc will create low quality encodes, its bitrate is too low. It will have to be bumped up to get some good quality.
When using ffmpeg, pass -b 0 (bitrate 0) so that it doesn't limit bitrate. Also use a CRF. For very high quality encodes, I'd say around 6 to 8.
ffmpeg -i video.y4m -vcodec libvpx -crf 6 -b:v 0 -y video.mkv
HandBrake:
HandBrakeCLI -i video.y4m -e VP8 -q 6 -o video.mkv
