The general format of invoking ffmpeg from the command line is:

ffmpeg  -i in.mp4 -ss [start] -t [duration] -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mp4

Of the below, 5a seemed to work the best…

ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v libx264 -crf 26 -af "volume=10dB" -pix_fmt yuv420p ~/Movies/vlc-clip-05a.mp4



Other attempts:

1. Works, but drops few ms of video. Copies video; sets volume. 262 KB

ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v copy -af "volume=10dB"  ~/Movies/vlc-clip-01.mp4

as above but addresses bframes issue

ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v copy  -bsf:v mpeg4_unpack_bframes -af "volume=10dB"  ~/Movies/vlc-clip-01a.mp4

2. Perfect. Video transocded to H264, lossless. Volume increased. 4.4 MB file though! 59s to encode!

ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -qp 0 -af "volume=10dB"  ~/Movies/vlc-clip-02.mp4

3.     Very good. Video transocded to H264, optimised for fast encoding. 482 KB, 49s encode time.


### 4.     Best yet. Video transocded to H264, optimised for youtube. 246 KB. 47s to encode.
[cc lang="bash" nowrap="false"]ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v libx264 -preset slow -af "volume=10dB" -pix_fmt yuv420p ~/Movies/vlc-clip-04.mp4```

# CRF (Constant Rate Factor) scale is 0-51: where 0 is lossless, 23 is default, and 51 is worst possible.
# A lower value is a higher quality and a subjectively sane range is 18-28.
# Consider 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so
# The range is exponential, so increasing the CRF value +6 is roughly half the bitrate.
# Choose the highest CRF value that still looks good

### 5. Bester :-)... audio not increased, but sounds great (except on youtube. Grrr). Quality just fine. 185 KB. 30s to encode.
```bash ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7  -c:v libx264 -crf 26 -c:a copy -pix_fmt yuv420p ~/Movies/vlc-clip-05.mp4

5a. as above but with vol. inc.

6. as above 47 s to encode. 13 KB… bit worse, but not worth the extra encoding time for the file size delta

7. as #5, but with -bsf:v mpeg4_unpack_bframes bitstream

ffmpeg -i ~/Movies/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010/Edge.Of.Darkness.2010.avi -ss  00:54:54 -t 00:00:7 -c:v libx264 -crf 26  -c:a copy -pix_fmt yuv420p -flags global_header ~/Movies/vlc-clip-07.mp4