Compress MOV to MP4 CUDA

2025-04-16 10:38 UTC gpt-4o Open in ChatGPT ↗

To compress a QuickTime .mov terminal screen recording to .mp4 using FFmpeg with CUDA GPU acceleration (NVENC), you can use the following command:

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -i input.mov -c:v h264_nvenc -preset fast -b:v 2M -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

Breakdown:

-hwaccel cuda: Use CUDA for hardware acceleration.
-i input.mov: Your input file.
-c:v h264_nvenc: Use NVIDIA’s H.264 encoder.
-preset fast: Adjust quality/speed trade-off. Options: default, slow, medium, fast, hp, hq, etc.
-b:v 2M: Set video bitrate. You can tweak this depending on quality vs size. Terminal recordings typically don’t need high bitrates.
-c:a aac: Encode audio in AAC format.
-b:a 128k: Set audio bitrate.
output.mp4: Your output filename.

Optional tweaks for terminal recordings:

If the screen recording is very static (like a terminal), consider using constant rate factor (CRF) instead of a fixed bitrate for better efficiency:

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -i input.mov -c:v h264_nvenc -cq 28 -preset fast -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

-cq 28: Constant quantizer (lower = better quality). Try 23–30 range.

Let me know if you want a version using HEVC (hevc_nvenc) instead for better compression.

To encode your .mov terminal screen recording to .mp4 at 24 fps using CUDA, here’s the updated FFmpeg command:

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -i input.mov -r 24 -c:v h264_nvenc -preset fast -cq 28 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

Key changes:

-r 24: Sets the output frame rate to 24 fps.
-cq 28: Keeps the quality decent and efficient for terminal recordings (you can adjust between 23–30).

Let me know if you’d like it tailored further — like cropping, scaling, or using HEVC instead of H.264.

Perfect — to speed up the video by 1.5x, you need to adjust both video and audio playback speeds.

Here’s your updated command:

ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -i input.mov -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=PTS/1.5[v];[0:a]atempo=1.5[a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" -r 24 -c:v h264_nvenc -preset fast -cq 28 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

What this does:

setpts=PTS/1.5: Speeds up the video by 1.5x.
atempo=1.5: Speeds up the audio by 1.5x (works for values between 0.5 and 2.0).
-filter_complex: Applies both filters together.
-map "[v]" -map "[a]": Ensures the filtered streams are used.
-r 24: Outputs at 24fps.
-c:v h264_nvenc: NVIDIA GPU encoding.
-preset fast -cq 28: Fast encoding with decent quality.
-c:a aac -b:a 128k: Compresses audio.

Let me know if you also want to trim, resize, or batch-convert files.