transcoding videos for playstation vita with ffmpeg

i want to keep a small library of tv series and movies on my playstation vita. the vita is picky about what it will play.

it will only play mp4 videos, afaik. mp4’s can’t support subtitles with fonts/colours that many of my mkv series have, and which i prefer. since i always want subtitles, i’ll hardcode them.

i’ve only tested it with one anime series so far.

$ ffmpeg -i $INPUT.mkv \
    -map 0:a:1 \
    -map 0:v \
    -vf "subtitles=$INPUT.mkv:si=1, scale=960:544, format=yuv420p" \
    -c:v libx264 -preset slow -profile:v baseline -crf 18 \
    -c:a aac -b:a 128k \
    $OUTPUT.mp4

explination of commands: TODO