DaVinci Resolve H.264 Master Preset: The FFmpeg Equivalent

DaVinci Resolve's H.264 Master preset is written out in full in the official reference manual — and exactly one of its defaults is a number. Everything else is a mode name. That is the honest starting point for anyone trying to make FFmpeg produce what Resolve's Deliver page produces.

You can match the container, the codec, the pass count, the keyframe mode, the B-frame behaviour and the audio data rate, because Blackmagic states each one. You cannot match "Quality: Auto" — Blackmagic never published what Auto resolves to.

The preset, verbatim

The DaVinci Resolve 21 Reference Manual describes the preset in one paragraph:

"H.264 Master: For outputting H.264 files of a whole program. When selected, defaults to rendering in single clip mode, with the Format set to QuickTime, and the Codec set to H.264. Quality, Encoding Profile, and Entropy Mode are set to Auto, Passes defaults to Single, and Key Frames default to Automatic with Frame Reordering turned on. Audio defaults to the Codec being AAC with the Data Rate set to 320 Kb/s and the Bit Depth set to 16."

Note the container: QuickTime, not MP4. The H.265 Master and ProRes Master presets default to QuickTime too. If you assumed the Master presets write .mp4, that is the first assumption to drop.

The command

ffmpeg -i input.mov \
  -c:v libx264 -crf 18 \
  -c:a aac -b:a 320k \
  output.mov

That is the documented shape of the preset: H.264 video in a QuickTime container, single pass, AAC audio at 320 Kb/s, no profile forced because the preset does not force one. The -crf 18 is the one value you are choosing rather than copying — see the Quality row below.

Blackmagic does not publish FFmpeg commands. It describes controls, and these flags are how FFmpeg expresses those descriptions. Where the question is what your FFmpeg build does by default, ffmpeg -h encoder=libx264 is the authority; this page only claims to be accurate about what Blackmagic wrote.

What each default maps to

Four of those rows need more than a line.

Quality is the row with no answer. The manual's entry reads: "Quality: If the currently selected option in the Render to dropdown menu has options for changing the compression quality, this dropdown menu lets you choose the quality you want to use. Otherwise, it's disabled." It never enumerates the steps in that dropdown, and it never says what Auto picks. So there is no verbatim CRF or bitrate to copy — pick your own and judge the result. The neighbouring control is equally open: "Restrict to X Kb/s: You can choose Automatic, or select a maximum data rate with which to export." Automatic, again, with no published number behind it.

Entropy Mode is the row where Resolve explains the flag better than most FFmpeg tutorials. The manual gives both algorithms outright:

"CALVC (context-adaptive variable-length encoding): A lower-quality algorithm that's less computationally intensive to process and play."

"CABAC (context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding): A higher-quality algorithm that yields better visual quality at lower bandwidth, at the cost of being more computationally expensive to process and play."

(The manual spells it CALVC; that is the official text, quoted as printed.) That is the whole trade in two sentences: CABAC costs encode and playback time and buys quality per bit. The preset leaves the choice on Auto, so the closest match is to leave it alone.

Frame Reordering is B-frames, and Blackmagic says so plainly: "Frame Reordering: (Available for QuickTime H.264 and H.265) On by default, Frame Reordering enables the encoding of B frames to improve the quality of the resulting compressed movie file. Turning off Frame Reordering will speed encoding performance at the expense of visual quality." If you want the FFmpeg equivalent of switching it off, that is -bf 0, with the same trade the manual describes — faster, worse.

Passes and Key Frames are stated as modes, not counts. On multi-pass: "You can choose between Single and Multi-pass encoding. Single pass is faster, but multi-pass yields superior results when quality is important. When you enable Multi-pass, the number of passes performed is automatic." FFmpeg makes you name the pass number; Resolve does not tell you what it chose. Key Frames is similar: "You can choose Automatic, or select a duration for manual keyframe insertion" — a duration, where -g takes a frame count.

One qualifier you cannot drop: the manual tags Multi-pass, Key Frames and Frame Reordering each with "(Available for QuickTime H.264 and H.265)". Switch the Format to MP4 to match an FFmpeg habit, and you leave the scope Blackmagic documented those three controls in.

Variations

H.265 Master. Its paragraph differs in two places worth copying: "Quality is set to Automatic, Encoding Profile is set to Main, Passes defaults to Single, and Key Frames default to Automatic with Frame Reordering turned on." So the H.265 preset does pin a profile where the H.264 one leaves it on Auto, and its documented default list makes no mention of Entropy Mode. Audio is identical — AAC, 320 Kb/s, 16-bit.

MP4 instead of QuickTime. The manual's Format list says "MP4: Dedicated MP4 encoding lets you export H.264-encoded movies" — H.264 only — while the QuickTime entry lists H.264, HEVC, H.265 and VP9. The July 2025 Supported Formats and Codecs document, however, gives H.265 an Encode value in the mp4 row. Two official sources, two scopes; MP4 vs QuickTime in Resolve has the side-by-side.

If you would rather not install FFmpeg

For a single file, the same kind of H.264 re-encode runs in a browser tab:

It encodes with x264 at CRF 20 without downscaling and writes AAC audio, so it lands in the same family as a Master-preset export. The file is read from disk, processed locally and handed back; nothing is uploaded. What it will not give you is a pass count, an entropy mode or a keyframe interval — for those, the command line is the right tool. The full set is at all Clapr tools.

Troubleshooting

Your FFmpeg output and your Resolve export are different sizes. Expected. Quality and Restrict-to-data-rate are both documented as Automatic with no published value, so there is nothing to match them against. Compare visually, not by byte count.

You want -c:v copy behaviour in Resolve. There isn't any for this codec. In the July 2025 Supported Formats and Codecs document, the Codec Passthrough column is a dash for H.264, H.265, MV-HEVC, AV1 and VP9 across every platform and container — so trimming an H.264 file in Resolve and exporting re-encodes it, where FFmpeg would stream-copy. Bypass re-encode, explained covers which formats do qualify.

You are on Linux and Resolve will not encode H.264 at all. That document's Rocky Linux 8.6 (CUDA) section lists H.264 and H.265 encoding as "Studio and Nvidia graphics (GPU accelerated)" — both conditions, not either — and decoding as "Studio Only (GPU accelerated on Nvidia graphics)". FFmpeg carries no such tiering, which is often the real reason a Linux user ends up on the command line.

Your timeline is 4K. The same notes say encoding at 4K and above is only supported with DaVinci Resolve Studio, while the product pages describe the free version differently. Check the official documentation before planning a delivery around it.

FAQ

What FFmpeg command matches DaVinci Resolve's H.264 Master preset? ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -b:a 320k output.mov covers every default Blackmagic publishes: QuickTime container, H.264, single pass, AAC at 320 Kb/s, no forced profile.

Does the H.264 Master preset export MP4 or MOV? QuickTime. The manual states "the Format set to QuickTime" for both the H.264 Master and H.265 Master presets.

What does Frame Reordering do in DaVinci Resolve? It enables B-frames. The manual: it "enables the encoding of B frames to improve the quality of the resulting compressed movie file", and turning it off "will speed encoding performance at the expense of visual quality". The FFmpeg equivalent of turning it off is -bf 0.

What bitrate does the H.264 Master preset use? Blackmagic does not publish one. The only number in the preset's description is the audio data rate, 320 Kb/s. Video quality is governed by a dropdown documented only as letting you "choose the quality you want to use".

Should I use CABAC or CAVLC? Resolve's own description answers it: CABAC yields "better visual quality at lower bandwidth, at the cost of being more computationally expensive to process and play". Choose CABAC unless decode speed matters more than bitrate.

All Resolve settings quoted from the DaVinci Resolve 21 Reference Manual and the official Supported Formats and Codecs document dated July 2025, checked 16 September 2026. Blackmagic revises both without notice. More command-line write-ups are in our ffmpeg guides.