Convert, cut, and compress video and audio with ffmpeg. invoer and uitvoer are your file names.
Information
| What’s in a file? |
ffprobe -hide_banner invoer.mp4 |
| The version and available formats |
ffmpeg -version |
Converting
| To another format, with default settings |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mkv uitvoer.mp4 |
| Change only the container, without re-encoding (fast) |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mkv -c copy uitvoer.mp4 |
| To H.264 with good quality (lower number = better) |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset medium -c:a aac -b:a 128k uitvoer.mp4 |
| To H.265 (smaller file) |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -c:v libx265 -crf 28 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a copy uitvoer.mp4 |
| Make playable everywhere (color format) |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p uitvoer.mp4 |
Format and speed
| Scale down to 1280 width (height automatic) |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -vf scale=1280:-2 uitvoer.mp4 |
| Rotate the image 90 degrees |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" uitvoer.mp4 |
| Twice as fast |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -filter:v "setpts=0.5*PTS" -an uitvoer.mp4 |
| Set the frames per second |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -r 30 uitvoer.mp4 |
Cutting and merging
| Extract a section (from 1:00 to 2:30) |
ffmpeg -ss 00:01:00 -to 00:02:30 -i invoer.mp4 -c copy uitvoer.mp4 |
| A thumbnail at 10 seconds |
ffmpeg -ss 10 -i invoer.mp4 -frames:v 1 thumbnail.jpg |
| Concatenate files (list in lijst.txt) |
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i lijst.txt -c copy uitvoer.mp4 |
Audio
| Extract the audio as mp3 |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -vn -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 2 uitvoer.mp3 |
| Copy the audio unchanged |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -vn -c:a copy uitvoer.m4a |
| Remove the audio |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -an -c:v copy uitvoer.mp4 |
| Burn subtitles into the image |
ffmpeg -i invoer.mp4 -vf subtitles=ondertitel.srt uitvoer.mp4 |
Images
| A sequence of images to a video |
ffmpeg -framerate 25 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p uitvoer.mp4 |
Good to know
lijst.txt for merging contains per line file 'deel1.mp4'.-c copy is fast and doesn’t lose quality, but cutting then only works on keyframes and not all formats can be combined this way.- With
-y ffmpeg overwrites without asking, with -n never. Existing files are otherwise asked first.
Sources and attribution
This overview is compiled in our own words. Commands and options change per version: check the official documentation when in doubt.