Digitizing a PAL Betacam SP tape archive for a national broadcasting museum. MPEG-2 at 50 Mbps to match the original SD-upscaled quality, 25fps PAL, PCM audio for lossless preservation, MKV for metadata and chapter support.
| Video Codec | MPEG-2 |
| Bitrate | 50M |
| Resolution | 1080p |
| Audio | PCM |
| Container | MKV |
| Framerate | 25 |
ffmpeg -i input.avi -c:v mpeg2video -b:v 50M -r 25 -c:a pcm_s16le output.mkvBetacam SP tapes degrade about 10-20% per decade even in climate-controlled storage. The "magnetic cliff" means tapes from the 1990s are hitting critical preservation deadlines now — once oxide shed begins, the content is unrecoverable.
A new FFmpeg encoding puzzle every day. Six tries, in the browser or from your terminal.