If you’ve got a high-quality rip of Superman & Lois Season 1, Episode 4 (“The Beast Within”)—possibly a 4K or high-bitrate 1080p MKV—you might be looking to shrink it down without destroying the dark, moody tones of Smallville. FFmpeg is the perfect command-line tool for this.
ffmpeg -i "S01E04.mkv" -vf "subtitles=S01E04.mkv:si=0" -c:v libx265 -crf 20 -c:a copy "S01E04_hardsub.mkv" Calculate bitrate: (2GB * 8192) / 2640 seconds ≈ 6.2 Mbps .
:
ffmpeg -i "S01E04.mkv" -map 0 -c:v h264_nvenc -preset p7 -cq 19 -c:a copy "S01E04_nvenc.mp4" (For HEVC on NVIDIA: -c:v hevc_nvenc ) Want just the 2-minute confrontation from 24:15 to 26:15?