[Ffmpeg-devel] Did bitrate (-b) break recently?

[Mike Richards]

I checked out ffmpeg from svn yesterday and the bitrate flag doesn't
seem to work anymore:

    --> ffmpeg -b 500 -ab 96 -i fishes.mp4 -s 320x240 fishes.mov

    --> frame= 1198 q=31.0 Lsize=   889kB time=40.0 bitrate= 182.3kbits/s

I specified 500kbps, but only got ~190-200kbps avg, and it's the same
no matter what I specify for -b, and no matter what input/output
format.

One other data point: If I don't specify anything for bitrate, then it
seems to default to a bitrate that is about 2-3 times higher. So, it
would appear that the "-b" flag is explicitly causing the bitrate to
go really low for some reason.

Is this a known problem? The last version of ffmpeg I was using was
from the end of 2005, and the -b flag worked fine back then.