: Game of Thrones has many dark scenes. Encoding in 10-bit helps significantly reduce banding in shadows and gradients, even if your source is 8-bit.
: The Constant Rate Factor (CRF) scale ranges from 0–51. A value of 18 is considered visually nearly identical to the source. For slightly smaller files that still look excellent, you can use 20–22 . game of thrones season 03 ffmpeg
Note: The Red Wedding scene (E09) specifically benefits from brightness=0.05 to see Catelyn’s face in the dim hall. : Game of Thrones has many dark scenes