19 ffmpeg commands for all needs

Some of my favorite ffmpeg commands. I use mencoder for the rest.

Pretty cool! In converting images to a video, how do you start in a different #… like say i want to do image50 to image100.jpg?

I only use ffmpeg with xine. I thought it was a library but it seems it is also a command line tool. And a very powerful at that.
Thanks a lot.

How would you define that in a command line? How about doing btws? Between image50 and image500? I know this is a lot to ask, but thanx for replying and your help!

@ jbj

I have images in sequence that look like this:

image00001.jpg

all the way to image05000.jpg

I tried doing the code up there but nothing. I get an error. Here’s what i tried:

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

I get this error:

image%d.jpg: I/O error occurred
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.

What’s interesting is if i change the file name to 001.jpg and so on, it works. I really don’t have control of what the jpg name is going to be so how do i get it to work with that naming convention? Thanx again!

@15 – v3g: “input” is a typo – just delete it. The OP is using the command line from the ffmpeg documentation, which uses “input” as a placeholder for the name of the input file.

Also, if you get an error about not having the aac codec, use libfaac instead.

http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/faq.html#SEC25

@v3g : When you change the video codec, you have to use the correct parameters. I have a few examples listed here for h.264:
http://onlydarksets.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/convert-sage-recordings-to-iphone/#more-408

@damien

might find some help here:

http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC3

arrived through stumble… excellent info.

to encode an avi to to an nokia e71 recognized mp4 format:

ffmpeg -y -i inputFILE.avi -acodec aac -ab 72k -s 320×176 -aspect 16:9 -vcodec h264 -b 300k -qcomp 0.6 -qmin 16 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -subq 7 -refs 6 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -rc_eq ‘blurCplx^(1-qComp)’ -sc_threshold 40 -me_range 12 -i_qfactor 0.71 -directpred 3 outputFILE.mp4

original file was 700MB, resulting mp4 encoded file slightly less then half @300MB…quality is excellent

even though I don’t foresee watching many video’s on this amazing phone, I thought I would share my findings…

hh,
manny

Thanks for a really nice post, It really helped me alot.

hello…thanks,it’s great but if i convert AVI format into jpg and 3GP into jpg at the same time, how we can determine it is the same frame?can u help me?

Hi,
I am facing problem to convert video to .flv in my linux server using ffmpeg. I think ffmpeg is not execute in my server. I gave read/write/execute permission to ffmpeg. Can anyone give me idea of this type of problem or how can i solve this?

Advanced thanks for helping me….

:- Morshed Alam

Thankyou so much
A tutorial for humans!!
Just what I’ve been looking for

what a great article

Dude this is an awesome list of commands. Usually I am only able to find a couple by searching when I need them, kind of hit and miss. You have a great list much more than most. Many Thanks!

Hello

I have converted video using ffmpeg for .wmv and then taken a snapshot for that video
Please check the below code
exec($varFFMPEGpath.’ -i ‘.$n_file_name.’ -sameq -ar 44100 -r 25 -ac 2 -ab 128 -b 1200 -qmin 3 -qmax 6 ‘.$filename1);
exec($varFFMPEGpath.’ -i ‘.$n_file_name.’ -deinterlace -an -ss 00:00:02 -r 1 -y -vcodec mjpeg -f mjpeg ‘.$Img_Name.” 2>&1″);

Video is playing but the audio is not getting.
Please suggest me to get through the issue. It will be grateful.

Thanks for this nice tutorial,if any one can provide how to make watermark in videos using ffmpeg becaz vhook is not live now…..Pls provide this

Using ffmpeg on our linux server to convert user uploaded videos to FLV. Sort of like a YouTube.

I am not satisfied with the quality, and know there has to be a better way. I have tried several changes, but am not getting where I would like it to be. As good as YouTube.

Please see my command line below, and suggest any changes I can make to improve the output quality.

Please keep in mind that the uploaded “user.fil” could be an flv,avi,wmv or a mpg.

ffmpeg -i user.fil -acodec libfaac -ab 156k -b 1024k output.flv

Thank you for any help you can give, and this is a GREAT cheat sheet. I will keep a copy by my side!!!

Hello,

I would like to cut the audio file for selected time..
Say I have a .mp3 of duration 00:50 sec..
I would like to cut the audio from 00:20 to 00:30 sec.
Please help me using ffmpeg command line.

Thanks in advance.
–Kapil

Any can provide to make watermark in videos,also how do make the avi videos for mobile?

Thanks for the cool tips. Do you think, that there is ffmpeg preset page for all mobile phones?

there is also another way to get good quality ffmpeg flv: using AviSynth+VP6.2 codec+patched ffmpeg

Hello,

thanks for the samples.

I think you should add a command to convert mp3 for iphones/ipods, this article is number one on google for linux convert mp3 for iphone.

PS: fix a typo for IPpod and add a copy command flash button like on github for urls.

Hello, All!

I’m using custom ffmpeg commands on a Drupal website for automatic conversion of uploaded files. It converts various file types to mpeg-4 (H.264) and is working fine. I need to add a simple slow motion to this process – simply repeated frames. In other words, I need a command to convert a video file with the following frames (A, B, C…) to (A, A, B, B, C, C…) for a 50% slomo.

If there’s some fancy way to do it with interpolation that would be even better, but for now I’ll settle for frame duplication.

Thanks in advance!

-James

Great info. Excellent list of commands for an amazing product like FFMPEG.

Hello,

I’ve been trying to convert a .flv file I got from youtube and convert it to a .mp4 file playable on my iPod but can’t seem to make it work. I type in:

ffmpeg -i sniper.flv -acodec aac -ab 128kb -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1200kb -mbd 2 -flags +4mv+trell -aic 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -s 320×180 -title X sniper.mp4

but it gives me the following message:

FFmpeg version SVN-r21125, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
built on Jan 10 2010 13:49:22 with gcc 4.4.1
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-version3 –enable-nonfree –enable-postproc –enable-pthreads –enable-libfaac –enable-libfaad –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-libtheora –enable-libx264 –enable-libxvid –enable-x11grab
libavutil 50. 7. 0 / 50. 7. 0
libavcodec 52.47. 0 / 52.47. 0
libavformat 52.46. 0 / 52.46. 0
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libswscale 0. 8. 0 / 0. 8. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
[flv @ 0x9815390]Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 59.93 (29967/500) -> 29.92 (359/12)
Input #0, flv, from ’sniper.flv’:
Metadata:
duration : 326
starttime : 0
totalduration : 326
width : 320
height : 180
videodatarate : 201
audiodatarate : 64
totaldatarate : 271
framerate : 30
bytelength : 11073949
canseekontime : true
sourcedata : B4A7DA446
Duration: 00:05:26.15, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 206 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: h264, yuv420p, 320×180 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 206 kb/s, 58.82 fps, 29.92 tbr, 1k tbn, 59.93 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 22050 Hz, stereo, s16
[NULL @ 0x980c020]Unable to parse option value “trell”: undefined constant or missing (
Invalid value ‘+4mv+trell’ for option ‘flags’

What am I doing wrong?