Command line: avconvert throws error "Invalid settings specifier"

I don't know what man page you're looking at, but on my system (12.5), there is no -vc option in the man page.

AVCONVERT(1)		     General Commands Manual		    AVCONVERT(1)

NAME
     avconvert – movie conversion tool

SYNOPSIS
     avconvert [-hv] -s <source_media> -o <output_movie> -p <preset_name>

DESCRIPTION
     avconvert is a tool that converts source media files to different file
     types for sharing on the web or loading onto devices.  The tool will not
     allow protected content to be converted.  Only one video and one audio
     track is preserved through the conversion, along with metadata tracks.  The
     tool will never resize the video higher than the source dimensions.  If the
     preset internal dimensions are larger than that of the source, the
     conversion will maintain the source dimensions.  The file extension
     provided for the output movie will determine the output file type.

     --source | -s file       The source media file to be converted.

     --output | -o file       The output movie file to be created.

     --preset | -p name       Use the specified preset for file conversion.  All
			      presets encode using AVC (H.264) encoding unless
			      otherwise specified in the preset name.  Use
			      --help to get the full list.

	[-- SNIP --]

OPTIONS
     --disableFastStart       Disable fast-start movie creation.  Reduces disk
			      accesses if fast-start is not required.

     --disableMetadataFilter  Disable the metadata filter.  Use with caution.
			      This will allow privacy sensitive source metadata
			      to be preserved in the output file.  This may
			      include information such as the location of the
			      video, time when the video was recorded, video
			      capture device information, etc.	If this option
			      is not specified, the aforementioned source
			      metadata is not present in the output file.

     --duration num	      Trim the output movie to num seconds (decimal
			      allowed).  Default is end of file.

     --help | -h	      Print command usage and list available preset
			      names.

     --multiPass	      Perform a higher quality multi-pass encode in the
			      conversion.

     --progress | -prog       Display progress during the conversion (default
			      with -v).

     --replace		      Overwrite the output file, if it already exists.

     --start num	      Skip the first num seconds (decimal allowed) of
			      the source movie.  Default is beginning of file.

     --verbose | -v	      Print additional information about the conversion.

EXAMPLES
     Convert the source movie from 4k HEVC to 720p AVC using the 1280x720
     encoding preset:

	  avconvert --source 4k_hevc_movie.mov --output 720p_avc_movie.mov
     --preset Preset1280x720

     Convert the source movie from 4k AVC to 4K HEVC using the
     HEVCHighestQuality encoding preset:

	  avconvert -s 4k_avc_movie.mov -o 4k_hevc_movie.mov -p
     PresetHEVCHighestQuality

     Skip the first 3.5 seconds of the source movie and only convert the next 30
     seconds:

	  avconvert --source source_movie.mov --output trimmed_movie.mov -p
     PresetMediumQuality --start 3.5 --duration 30

     Convert the source movie from a QuickTime movie file to an MPEG-4 file:

	  avconvert -s source_movie.mov -o output_movie.mp4 -p PresetLowQuality

HISTORY
     avconvert command first appeared in Mac OS X 10.7.

     64-bit implementation introduced in Mac OS X 10.15.

macOS				 October 8, 2021			   macOS

From what I can tell, the output format is determined by the PRESET and -o parameters.

scrutinizer82 wrote:

The error is

Invalid settings specifier for video track:vc.

Command line parse failed at command:-vc

The options are used correctly according to the avconvert man page. The command is of the form

avconvert -p Preset1920x1080 -s video_1.mov -o video_2.mov -vc mpg4

When I omit -vc the command works. When the flag is there it fails. Same with the --videoCodec representation of the -vc. I went through many articles on FourCC and fish out every FourCC index: I used h264, even avc1 (although unnecessary, since it's the default) but no success.

Why?

10.9, 10.14

old issue, new issue, what changed?

avconvert – movie conversion tool

I do not see the -c flag in the man page(?)

-v yes

--verbose | -v Print additional information about the conversion.

man avconvert | more