Let’s address the "free" aspect of this article’s keyword.
FFMpeg is free software. However, Spartacus: House of Ashur is copyrighted by Starz/Lionsgate. While the technical commands above are perfectly legal to use on your own purchased digital copies (e.g., a MakeMKV rip of your Blu-ray or a recording of a stream you have a license to view), downloading S01E02 via torrent or cyberlocker is copyright infringement.
This guide is intended for fair use purposes: spartacus house of ashur s01e02 ffmpeg free
For those with an RTX card who want to process House of Ashur in 10 minutes instead of 1 hour:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v h264_nvenc -preset p7 -tune hq -rc vbr -cq 21 -b:v 0 -c:a copy output_nvenc.mp4
To share that finishing move on Reddit:
ffmpeg -i "input.mkv" -ss 00:15:00 -t 10 -c copy "clip.mkv"
If you're looking for a review of Season 1, Episode 2 ("S01E02") of "Spartacus: House of Ashur," here are some general points about the series and its episodes:
If you want a GUI wrapper for FFmpeg that is also Free (as in beer and speech): Let’s address the "free" aspect of this article’s
Perhaps you want to sample Ashur’s monologue from S01E02. Extract just the audio as a high-quality MP3:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vn -acodec libmp3lame -q:a 4 "Ashur_Speech_S01E02.mp3"
Want to clip the fight scene from 23:15 to 27:40? For those with an RTX card who want
ffmpeg -ss 00:23:15 -i input.mkv -t 00:04:25 -c copy "Ashur_Fight_Clip.mkv"
Pro tip: Use -ss before -i for instant cuts (keyframe accuracy) or after -i for frame-accurate cuts (slower).