Useful ffmpeg Recipes

📅 31 January 2022 🔖 tools ⏲️ 1 minute to read

A few ffmpeg commands I find useful, so I don't need to keep reading the documentation.

Convert to mp4
Concatenate
Speed Up
Seek and Crop
Resize

Convert to mp4

Converts the input to mp4 using libx264, using a quality of 35 (0-51, where o is lossless) and 256k audio compression (high quality). This video should be compatible with most devices.

ffmpeg -i "input.ext" -c:v libx264 -crf 35 -b:a 256k "output.mp4"

Concatenate

Concatenates the videos specified in file.txt

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i "file.txt" -c copy "output.ext"

The contents of file.txt (must be single quotes)

file 'path/to/file1.ext'
file 'path/to/file2.ext'
file 'path/to/file3.ext'
...

Speed Up

Speeds up the input video 256 times, and strips the audio with -an

ffmpeg -i "input.ext" -an -filter:v "setpts=PTS/256" "output.ext"

Seek and Crop

Do the following:

-ss 10 seek to 10 seconds
-t take 4 seconds of video
crop=w=1280:h=500:x=0:y=110 take a 1280×500 box at coordinate 0,110

ffmpeg -ss 10 -t 4 -i "input.ext" -filter:v "crop=w=1280:h=500:x=0:y=110" "output.ext"

Resize

Resize the video to 640 pixels wide, making ffmpeg calculate the height based on the aspect ratio of the input video.

ffmpeg -i "input.ext" -vf scale=640:-1 "output.ext"

🏷️ video convert mp4 seek resize input ffmpeg crop audio recipe command documentation libx264 0-51 lossless

Alan Edwardes