.avi to .flv through ffmpeg

Question

When I try to convert avi to flv, I always get gritty and pixelated output flv videos of size that are 1/4 of the the input avi videos were. The current set of parameters I use is

ffmpeg -i input.avi -y -ab 56 -ar 44100 -b 200 -r 15 -f flv output.flv

Admittedly, I don't know what any of these parameters really do and I just try whatever looks appropriate. Can anyone recommend a good set of parameters that would keep my .flv video close to .avi quality after conversion?

Solution

You're setting the video bitrate to 200 bytes/sec. This is incredibly low. Change the command to something like:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -y -ab 56 -ar 44100 -b 200k -r 15 -f flv output.flv

You can vary the bitrate (specified by the -b option) to increase or decrease the quality. A higher bitrate means better quality.