Useful ffmpeg Recipes

📅 31 January 2022, updated 2 October 2025 🔖 tools ⏲️ 2 minutes 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
Create Animated Gif
Merge Audio into a Video with Audio
Stream Video Device via TCP
List Suported Formats for Device

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"

Create Animated Gif

Create an animated gif using a palette specifically for the video using a single command. Notable parameters:

-ss <n> to skip a specified number of seconds
-t <n> to specify the length of the gif
fps=<n> to specify the frame rate (part of -vf)
-loop 0 to loop forever

ffmpeg -ss 2 -t 6 -i "input.ext" -vf "fps=24,scale=0:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse" -loop 0 "output.gif"

Merge Audio into a Video with Audio

Merge an audio file into a video file which already has audio, without re-encoding the video:

ffmpeg -i "input-video.ext" -i "input-audio.ext" -filter_complex "[0:a:0][1:a:0]amix=inputs=2:duration=longest[aout];[aout]volume=2.0[a_final]" -c:v copy -map 0:v:0 -map [a_final] -c:a aac -b:a 192k output-video.mp4

The audio is boosted 2x, because I found that merging two stereo streams resulted in an audio track which peaks at 50% volume.

Stream Video Device via TCP

Stream a video device directly via TCP. Notable parameters:

-i /dev/video0 the input device - can also be -i - to read from a piped command
-c:v the codec to use (h264_v4l2m2m can be hardware encoded on Raspberry Pi 4 hardware)
-b:v 1M the bitrate to use (e.g. 1 megabit)
-f mpegts tcp://0.0.0.0:2000\?listen the format to serve up on the specified socket

ffmpeg -i /dev/video0 -c:v h264_v4l2m2m -b:v 1M -f mpegts tcp://0.0.0.0:2000\?listen

An example of TCP streaming using camera input piped from rpicam-vid (in this case for use with a non-USB Raspberry Pi camera):

rpicam-vid --nopreview --timeout 0 --framerate 10 --width 1152 --height 864 --hflip --vflip --output - | ffmpeg -i - -c:v h264_v4l2m2m -b:v 1M -f mpegts tcp://0.0.0.0:2000\?listen

Another example, except this time there's no re-encoding, the stream is just re-muxed:

rpicam-vid --nopreview --timeout 0 --framerate 10 --width 1920 --height 1080 --codec h264 --bitrate 1000000 --inline --output - | ffmpeg  -i - -c:v copy -mpegts_flags resend_headers -f mpegts tcp://0.0.0.0:2000?listen

And another example, where rpicam-vid streams directly, no use of ffmpeg:

rpicam-vid --nopreview --timeout 0 --framerate 10 --width 1080 --height 1080 --hflip --codec libav --libav-format mpegts --bitrate 1000000 --inline --output tcp://0.0.0.0:2000?listen=1

List Suported Formats for Device

The below command will list all video formats supported by /dev/video0 for use with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -list_formats all -i /dev/video0

Example output:

[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x559b1735c0] Compressed:       mjpeg :          Motion-JPEG : 1920x1080 1600x1200 1360x768 1280x1024 1280x960 1280x720 1024x768 800x600 720x576 720x480 640x480
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x559b1735c0] Raw       :     yuyv422 :           YUYV 4:2:2 : 1920x1080 1600x1200 1360x768 1280x1024 1280x960 1280x720 1024x768 800x600 720x576 720x480 640x480

This shows that the v4l2 format can be used with an input format of yuyv422, with one of the listed resolutions. This can be used in a command like so:

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -input_format yuyv422 -video_size 1280x720 -i /dev/video0 <output>

🏷️ video audio stream device input command gif tcp ffmpeg convert mp4 seek resize animated merge

Alan Edwardes