Seems like the ffmpeg installation on my system is a little weird. I re-ran one of the tests above and captured the output (instead of the terminal progress bar). Got this output:
Mp4z
['/opt/local/bin/ffmpeg', '-threads', '0', '-i', '/var/folders/j5/hp16sj9j077g4c8cszk56pv80000gq/T/Tablo9Uoysf.ts', '-preset', 'ultrafast', '-y', '-metadata:s:a:0', 'language=eng', '-metadata', 'title=The Meemaw Materialization', '-metadata', 'date=2016-02-04', '-metadata', 'media_type=10', '-metadata', 'album=The Big Bang Theory', '-metadata', 'show=The Big Bang Theory', '-metadata', 'season_number=9', '-metadata', 'episode_sort=14', '-metadata', 'episode_id=s09e14', '-metadata', 'hd_video=1', '-metadata', 'genre=', '-metadata', "synopsis=Sheldon's excitement about his Meemaw's visit fades when she butts heads with Amy; Raj questions his relationship with Emily after meeting someone new.", '-metadata', "description=Sheldon's excitement about his Meemaw's visit fades when she butts heads with Amy; Raj questions his relationship with Emily after meeting someone new.", '-metadata', "comment=Sheldon's excitement about his Meemaw's visit fades when she butts heads with Amy; Raj questions his relationship with Emily after meeting someone new.", u'./TV Shows/The Big Bang Theory/Season 9/The Big Bang Theory - s09e14 - The Meemaw Materialization-z.mp4']
ffmpeg version 2.8.5 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
built with Apple LLVM version 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81)
configuration: --prefix=/opt/local --enable-swscale --enable-avfilter --enable-avresample --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libmodplug --enable-libvpx --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-lzma --enable-gnutls --enable-fontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --disable-indev=jack --disable-outdev=xv --mandir=/opt/local/share/man --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --cc=/usr/bin/clang --enable-vda --enable-videotoolbox --arch=x86_64 --enable-yasm --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid
libavutil 54. 31.100 / 54. 31.100
libavcodec 56. 60.100 / 56. 60.100
libavformat 56. 40.101 / 56. 40.101
libavdevice 56. 4.100 / 56. 4.100
libavfilter 5. 40.101 / 5. 40.101
libavresample 2. 1. 0 / 2. 1. 0
libswscale 3. 1.101 / 3. 1.101
libswresample 1. 2.101 / 1. 2.101
libpostproc 53. 3.100 / 53. 3.100
Input #0, mpegts, from '/var/folders/j5/hp16sj9j077g4c8cszk56pv80000gq/T/Tablo9Uoysf.ts':
Duration: 00:04:57.65, start: 1.405333, bitrate: 21442 kb/s
Program 1
Metadata:
service_name : Service01
service_provider: FFmpeg
Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: h264 (High) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p, 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], Closed Captions, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x101]: Audio: aac (LC) ([15][0][0][0] / 0x000F), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 258 kb/s
[libx264 @ 0x7ff28b000c00] using SAR=1/1
[libx264 @ 0x7ff28b000c00] using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX AVX2 FMA3 LZCNT BMI2
[libx264 @ 0x7ff28b000c00] profile Constrained Baseline, level 3.1
[libx264 @ 0x7ff28b000c00] 264 - core 142 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2014 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=0 ref=1 deblock=0:0:0 analyse=0:0 me=dia subme=0 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=0 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=0 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=12 lookahead_threads=2 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=0 weightp=0 keyint=250 keyint_min=25 scenecut=0 intra_refresh=0 rc=crf mbtree=0 crf=23.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=0
[aac @ 0x7ff28b001e00] The encoder 'aac' is experimental but experimental codecs are not enabled, add '-strict -2' if you want to use it.
Seems like ultrafast doesn’t work as installed. So I added the ‘-strict -2’ arguments to the definition of the Mp4z transcode and it worked.