ffmpeg commands

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg is free software and is licensed under the LGPL or GPL depending on your choice of configuration options.
FFmpeg supports most of the popular formats, we don’t need to worry a lot about that. Formats supported by FFmpeg include MPEG, MPEG-4 (Divx), ASF, AVI, Real Audio/Video and Quicktime. To see a list of all the codecs/formats supported by FFmpeg, run the following command:

ffmpeg -formats

1. X11 grabbing

FFmpeg can grab the X11 display.

ffmpeg -f x11grab -s cif -i :0.0 /tmp/out.mpg

0.0 is display.screen number of your X11 server, same as the DISPLAY environment variable.

ffmpeg -f x11grab -s cif -i :0.0+10,20 /tmp/out.mpg

0.0 is display.screen number of your X11 server, same as the DISPLAY environment variable. 10 is the x-offset and 20 the y-offset for the grabbing.

ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 800x600 -i :0.0 /tmp/outputFile.mpg

2. Convert Pictures To Movie

First, rename your pictures to follow a numerical sequence. For example, img1.jpg, img2.jpg, img3.jpg,… Then you may run:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i img%d.jpg /tmp/a.mpg

Notice that `%d’ is replaced by the image number.
`img%03d.jpg' means the sequence `img001.jpg', `img002.jpg', etc…
If you have large number of pictures to rename, you can use the following command to ease the burden. The command, using the bourne shell syntax, symbolically links all files in the current directory that match *jpg to the `/tmp' directory in the sequence of `img001.jpg', `img002.jpg' and so on.

x=1; for i in *jpg; do counter=$(printf %03d $x); ln "$i" /tmp/img"$counter".jpg; x=$(($x+1)); done

If you want to sequence them by oldest modified first, substitute $(ls -r -t *jpg) in place of *jpg.
Then run:

ffmpeg -f image2 -i /tmp/img%03d.jpg /tmp/a.mpg

The same logic is used for any image format that ffmpeg reads.

3. Video Conversions

Quick and dirty convert to flv

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mp4 outputfile.flv

This converts any media ffmpeg handles to flash. It would actually convert anything to anything, it’s based on the file extension. It doesn’t do ANY quality control, sizing, etc, it just does what it thinks is best.
Convert .flv to .3gp

ffmpeg -i file.flv -r 15 -b 128k -s qcif -acodec amr_nb -ar 8000 -ac 1 -ab 13 -f 3gp -y out.3gp

Download YouTube videos as .flv and convert them to .3gp for your mobile phone.
Convert AVI to iPhone MP4

ffmpeg -i [source].avi -f mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 250000 -s 480?320 -acodec aac -ar 24000 -ab 64 -ac 2 [destination].mp4

for 4:3 aspect:

ffmpeg -i source-xvid.avi -s 480x320 -aspect 4:3 -b 768k -ab 64k -ar 22050 -r 30000/1001 OUT.mp4

for 16:9:

ffmpeg -i source-xvid.avi -s 480x320 -aspect 16:9 -b 768k -ab 64k -ar 22050 -r 30000/1001 OUT.mp4

Create a video that is supported by youtube:

ffmpeg -i mymovie.mpg -ar 22050 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 32K -r 25 -s 320x240 -vcodec flv
mytarget.flv

Takes an mpeg video and coverts it to a youtube compatible flv file.
The -r 25 sets the frame rate for PAL, for NTSC use 29.97

4. Audio Conversion

Convert RM file to mp3

ffmpeg -i input.rm -acodec libmp3lame -ab 96k output.mp3

Adjust the bitrate (-ab) as necessary. If omitted FFmpeg will use a default of 64 kb/s.
Converting WMV to MP3 using FFMPEG

ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.mp3

This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.mp3
Converting WMV to FLV using FFMPEG

ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.flv

This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.flv, this will generate only audio content
Converting AMR to MP3 using FFMPEG

ffmpeg -i audio1.amr -ar 22050 audio1.mp3

This will convert audio1.amr file to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz
Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG

ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 audio1.mp3

This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz
Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG with MetaData

ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 -map_meta_data audio1.mp3:audio1.aac audio1.mp3

This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz and will copy the meta data from .aac file to .mp3 file

5. Audio Extraction

ffmpeg -i video.avi -f mp3 audio.mp3

Dumping Audio stream from flv (using ffmpeg)

ffmpeg -i input.flv -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy ouput.mp3

6. Record Audio and Video from webcam

To record video run ffmpeg with arguments such as these:

ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -i /dev/video0 out.mpg

To record both audio and video run ffmpeg with arguments such as these:

ffmpeg -f oss -i /dev/dsp -f video4linux2 -s 320x240 -i /dev/video0 out.mpg

7. Copy Only A Part Of Video

Cut out a piece of film from a file. Choose an arbitrary length and starting time.

ffmpeg -vcodec copy -acodec copy -i orginalfile -ss 00:01:30 -t 0:0:20 newfile

-vcodec, you choose what video codec the new file should be encoded with. Run ffmpeg -formats E to list all available video and audio encoders and file formats.
copy, you choose the video encoder that just copies the file.
-acodec, you choose what audio codec the new file should be encoded with.
copy, you choose the audio encoder that just copies the file.
-i originalfile, you provide the filename of the original file to ffmpeg
-ss 00:01:30, you choose the starting time on the original file in this case 1 min and 30 seconds into the film
-t 0:0:20, you choose the length of the new film
newfile, you choose the name of the file created.

8. Join Multiple Video Files

A few multimedia containers (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, DV) allow to join video files by merely concatenating them.
Hence you may concatenate your multimedia files by first transcoding them to these privileged formats, then using the humble cat command (or the equally humble copy under Windows), and finally transcoding back to your format of choice.

mkfifo orig1.mpg
mkfifo orig2.mpg
ffmpeg -i input1.avi -sameq -y orig1.mpg
ffmpeg -i input2.avi -sameq -y orig2.mpg

Merge files

cat orig1.mpg orig2.mpg | ffmpeg -f mpeg -i - -vcodec copy -acodec copy merged.mpg

Merge and convert to avi

cat orig1.mpg orig2.mpg | ffmpeg -f mpeg -i - -sameq -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec libmp3lame merged.avi

Notice that you should either use -sameq or set a reasonably high bitrate for your intermediate and output files, if you want to preserve video quality.
Also notice that you may avoid the huge intermediate files by taking advantage of named pipes, should your platform support it:

9. Removing Synchronization Problems Between Audio and Video

ffmpeg -i source_audio.mp3 -itsoffset 00:00:10.2 -i source_video.m2v target_video.flv

This assumes that there is a 10.2 sec delay between the video and the audio (delayed).
To extract the original video into a audio and video composites look at the command on extracting audio and video from a movie
Here is more information of how to use ffmpeg:
http://www.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html


ffmpeg is a multiplatform, open-source library for video and audio files. Useful and amazing commands covering almost all needs: video conversion, sound extraction, encoding file for iPod or PSP, and more.

Getting infos from a video file

ffmpeg -i video.avi

Turn X images to a video sequence

ffmpeg -f image2 -i image%d.jpg video.mpg

This command will transform all the images from the current directory (named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, etc…) to a video file named video.mpg.

Turn a video to X images

ffmpeg -i video.mpg image%d.jpg

This command will generate the files named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, …
The following image formats are also availables : PGM, PPM, PAM, PGMYUV, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, SGI.

Encode a video sequence for the iPpod/iPhone

ffmpeg -i source_video.avi input -acodec aac -ab 128kb -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1200kb -mbd 2 -flags +4mv+trell -aic 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -s 320x180 -title X final_video.mp4

Explanations :

• Source : source_video.avi
• Audio codec : aac
• Audio bitrate : 128kb/s
• Video codec : mpeg4
• Video bitrate : 1200kb/s
• Video size : 320px par 180px
• Generated video : final_video.mp4

Encode video for the PSP

ffmpeg -i source_video.avi -b 300 -s 320x240 -vcodec xvid -ab 32 -ar 24000 -acodec aac final_video.mp4

Explanations :

• Source : source_video.avi
• Audio codec : aac
• Audio bitrate : 32kb/s
• Video codec : xvid
• Video bitrate : 1200kb/s
• Video size : 320px par 180px
• Generated video : final_video.mp4

Extracting sound from a video, and save it as Mp3

ffmpeg -i source_video.avi -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192 -f mp3 sound.mp3

Explanations :

• Source video : source_video.avi
• Audio bitrate : 192kb/s
• output format : mp3
• Generated sound : sound.mp3

Convert a wav file to Mp3

ffmpeg -i son_origine.avi -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192 -f mp3 son_final.mp3

Convert .avi video to .mpg

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi video_finale.mpg

Convert .mpg to .avi

ffmpeg -i video_origine.mpg video_finale.avi

Convert .avi to animated gif(uncompressed)

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi gif_anime.gif

Mix a video with a sound file

ffmpeg -i son.wav -i video_origine.avi video_finale.mpg

Convert .avi to .flv

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -ab 56 -ar 44100 -b 200 -r 15 -s 320x240 -f flv video_finale.flv

Convert .avi to dv

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -s pal -r pal -aspect 4:3 -ar 48000 -ac 2 video_finale.dv

Or:

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target pal-dv video_finale.dv

Convert .avi to mpeg for dvd players

ffmpeg -i source_video.avi -target pal-dvd -ps 2000000000 -aspect 16:9 finale_video.mpeg

Explanations :

• target pal-dvd : Output format
• ps 2000000000 maximum size for the output file, in bits (here, 2 Gb)
• aspect 16:9 : Widescreen

Compress .avi to divx

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -s 320x240 -vcodec msmpeg4v2 video_finale.avi

Compress Ogg Theora to Mpeg dvd

ffmpeg -i film_sortie_cinelerra.ogm -s 720x576 -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec mp3 film_terminée.mpg

Compress .avi to SVCD mpeg2

NTSC format:

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target ntsc-svcd video_finale.mpg

PAL format:

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target pal-svcd video_finale.mpg

Compress .avi to VCD mpeg2

NTSC format:

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target ntsc-vcd video_finale.mpg

PAL format:

ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target pal-vcd video_finale.mpg

Multi-pass encoding with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i fichierentree -pass 2 -passlogfile ffmpeg2pass fichiersortie-2

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