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20+ FFmpeg Commands For Beginners -

OSTechNix

by sk · Published May 20, 2019 · Updated September 26, 2019

In this guide, I will be explaining how to use FFmpeg multimedia framework to do

various audio, video transcoding and conversion operations with examples. I have
compiled most commonly and frequently used 20+ FFmpeg commands for beginners.
I will keep updating this guide by adding more examples from time to time. Please
bookmark this guide and come back in a while to check for the updates. Let us get
started, shall we? If you haven’t installed FFmpeg in your Linux system yet, refer the
following guide.

Install FFmpeg in Linux

The typical syntax of the FFmpeg command is:

ffmpeg [global_options] {[input_file_options] -i input_url} ...

{[output_file_options] output_url} ...

We are now going to see some important and useful FFmpeg commands.

1. Getting audio/video file information

To display the details of a media file, run:

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4

Sample output:
ffmpeg version n4.1.3 Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 8.2.1 (GCC) 20181127
configuration: --prefix=/usr --disable-debug --disable-static --disable-stripping --enable-fo
libavutil 56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100
libavcodec 58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100
libavformat 58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100
libavdevice 58. 5.100 / 58. 5.100
libavfilter 7. 40.101 / 7. 40.101
libswscale 5. 3.100 / 5. 3.100
libswresample 3. 3.100 / 3. 3.100
libpostproc 55. 3.100 / 55. 3.100
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'video.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 512
compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41

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encoder : Lavf58.20.100
Duration: 00:00:28.79, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 454 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, smpte170m/bt470bg/smpte
Metadata:
handler_name : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 04/08/2019.
Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s (defa
Metadata:
handler_name : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 04/08/2019.
At least one output file must be specified

As you see in the above output, FFmpeg displays the media file information along
with FFmpeg details such as version, configuration details, copyright notice, build and
library options etc.

If you don’t want to see the FFmpeg banner and other details, but only the media file
information, use -hide_banner flag like below.

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -hide_banner

Sample output:

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View audio, video file information using FFMpeg

See? Now, it displays only the media file details.

2. Converting video files to different formats

FFmpeg is powerful audio and video converter, so It’s possible to convert media files
between different formats. Say for example, to convert mp4 file to avi file, run:

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 video.avi

Similarly, you can convert media files to any format of your choice.

For example, to convert youtube flv format videos to mpeg format, run:
$ ffmpeg -i video.flv video.mpeg

If you want to preserve the quality of your source video file, use ‘-qscale 0’
parameter:

$ ffmpeg -i input.webm -qscale 0 output.mp4

To check list of supported formats by FFmpeg, run:

$ ffmpeg -formats

3. Converting video files to audio files

To convert a video file to audio file, just specify the output format as .mp3, or .ogg, or
any other audio formats.

The above command will convert input.mp4 video file to output.mp3 audio file.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn output.mp3

Also, you can use various audio transcoding options to the output file as shown below.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 320 -f mp3 output.mp3

Here,

-vn – Indicates that we have disabled video recording in the output file.
-ar – Set the audio frequency of the output file. The common values used are 
22050, 44100, 48000 Hz.
-ac – Set the number of audio channels.
-ab – Indicates the audio bitrate.
-f – Output file format. In our case, it’s mp3 format.

4. Change resolution of video files

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If you want to set a particular resolution to a video file, you can use following
command:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v scale=1280:720 -c:a copy output.mp4

Or,

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -s 1280x720 -c:a copy output.mp4

The above command will set the resolution of the given video file to 1280×720.

Similarly, to convert the above file to 640×480 size, run:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v scale=640:480 -c:a copy output.mp4

Or,

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy output.mp4

This trick will help you to scale your video files to smaller display devices such as
tablets and mobiles.

5. Compressing video files

It is always an good idea to reduce the media files size to lower size to save the
harddrive’s space.

The following command will compress and reduce the output file’s size.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1280:-1 -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -crf 24 output.mp4

Please note that you will lose the quality if you try to reduce the video file size. You
can lower that crf value to 23 or lower if 24 is too aggressive.

You could also transcode the audio down a bit and make it stereo to reduce the size by
including the following options.

-ac 2 -c:a aac -strict -2 -b:a 128k

6. Compressing Audio files

Just like compressing video files, you can also compress audio files using -ab flag in
order to save some disk space.

Let us say you have an audio file of 320 kbps bitrate. You want to compress it by
changing the bitrate to any lower value like below.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -ab 128 output.mp3

The list of various available audio bitrates are:

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1. 96kbps
2. 112kbps
3. 128kbps
4. 160kbps
5. 192kbps
6. 256kbps
7. 320kbps

7. Removing audio stream from a video file

If you don’t want to a audio from a video file, use -an flag.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -an output.mp4

Here, ‘an’ indicates no audio recording.

The above command will undo all audio related flags, because we don’t audio from
the input.mp4.

8. Removing video stream from a media file

Similarly, if you don’t want video stream, you could easily remove it from the media
file using ‘vn’ flag. vn stands for no video recording. In other words, this command
converts the given media file into audio file.

The following command will remove the video from the given media file.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn output.mp3

You can also mention the output file’s bitrate using ‘-ab’ flag as shown in the
following example.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -ab 320 output.mp3

9. Extracting images from the video

Another useful feature of FFmpeg is we can easily extract images from a video file.
This could be very useful, if you want to create a photo album from a video file.

To extract images from a video file, use the following command:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 1 -f image2 image-%2d.png

Here,

-r – Set the frame rate. I.e the number of frames to be extracted into images per
second. The default value is 25.
-f – Indicates the output format i.e image format in our case.

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image-%2d.png – Indicates how we want to name the extracted images. In this

case, the names should start like image-01.png, image-02.png, image-03.png
and so on. If you use %3d, then the name of images will start like image-
001.png, image-002.png and so on.

10. Cropping videos

FFMpeg allows to crop a given media file in any dimension of our choice.

The syntax to crop a vide ofile is given below:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=w:h:x:y" output.mp4

Here,

input.mp4 – source video file.

-filter:v – Indicates the video filter.
crop – Indicates crop filter.
w – Width of the rectangle that we want to crop from the source video.
h – Height of the rectangle.
x – x coordinate of the rectangle that we want to crop from the source video.
y – y coordinate of the rectangle.

Let us say you want to a video with a width of 640 pixels and a height of 480 pixels,
from the position (200,150), the command would be:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=640:480:200:150" output.mp4

Please note that cropping videos will affect the quality. Do not do this unless it is
necessary.

11. Convert a specific portion of a video

Sometimes, you might want to convert only a specific portion (duration) of the video
file to different format. Say for example, the following command will convert the first
10 seconds of given video.mp4 file to video.avi format.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -t 10 output.avi

Here, we specify the the time in seconds. Also, it is possible to specify the time
in hh.mm.ss format.

12. Set the aspect ratio to video

You can set the aspect ration to a video file using -aspect flag like below.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -aspect 16:9 output.mp4

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The commonly used aspect ratios are:

16:9
4:3
16:10
5:4
2:21:1
2:35:1
2:39:1

13. Adding poster image to audio files

You can add the poster images to your files, so that the images will be displayed while
playing the audio files. This could be useful to host audio files in Video hosting or
sharing websites.

$ ffmpeg -loop 1 -i inputimage.jpg -i inputaudio.mp3 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -strict experiment

14. Trim a media file using start and stop times

To trim down a video to smaller clip using start and stop times, we can use the
following command.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:00:50 -codec copy -t 50 output.mp4

Here,

–s – Indicates the starting time of the video clip. In our example, starting time is
the 50th second.
-t – Indicates the total time duration.

This is very helpful when you want to cut a part from an audio or video file using
starting and ending time.

Similarly, we can trim down the audio file like below.

$ ffmpeg -i audio.mp3 -ss 00:01:54 -to 00:06:53 -c copy output.mp3

15. Split video files into multiple parts

Some websites will allow you to upload only a specific size of video. In such cases,
you can split the large video files into multiple smaller parts like below.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -t 00:00:30 -c copy part1.mp4 -ss 00:00:30 -codec copy part2.mp4

Here, -t 00:00:30 indicates a part that is created from the start of the video to the 30th
second of video. -ss 00:00:30 shows the starting time stamp for the next part of video.
It means that the 2nd part will start from the 30th second and will continue up to the

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end of the original video file.

16. Joining or merging multiple video parts into one

FFmpeg will also join the multiple video parts and create a single video file.

Create join.txt file that contains the exact paths of the files that you want to join. All
files should be same format (same codec). The path name of all files should be
mentioned one by one like below.

file /home/sk/myvideos/part1.mp4
file /home/sk/myvideos/part2.mp4
file /home/sk/myvideos/part3.mp4
file /home/sk/myvideos/part4.mp4

Now, join all files using command:

$ ffmpeg -f concat -i join.txt -c copy output.mp4

If you get an error something like below;

[concat @ 0x555fed174cc0] Unsafe file name '/path/to/mp4'

join.txt: Operation not permitted

Add “-safe 0”:

$ ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i join.txt -c copy output.mp4

The above command will join part1.mp4, part2.mp4, part3.mp4, and part4.mp4 files
into a single file called “output.mp4”.

17. Add subtitles to a video file

We can also add subtitles to a video file using FFmpeg. Download the correct subtitle
for your video and add it your video as shown below.

$ fmpeg -i input.mp4 -i subtitle.srt -map 0 -map 1 -c copy -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset veryf

18. Preview or test video or audio files

You might want to preview to verify or test whether the output file has been properly
transcoded or not. To do so, you can play it from your Terminal with command:

$ ffplay video.mp4

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Similarly, you can test the audio files as shown below.

$ ffplay audio.mp3

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19. Increase/decrease video playback speed

FFmpeg allows you to adjust the video playback speed.

To increase the video playback speed, run:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "setpts=0.5*PTS" output.mp4

The command will double the speed of the video.

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To slow down your video, you need to use a multiplier greater than 1.  To decrease
playback speed, run:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "setpts=4.0*PTS" output.mp4

20. Create Animated GIF

We use GIF images on almost all social and professional networks for various
purposes. Using FFmpeg, we can easily and quickly create animated video files. The
following guide explains how to create an animated GIF file using FFmpeg and
ImageMagick in Unix-like systems.

How To Create Animated GIF In Linux

Suggested read:

Gifski – A Cross-platform High-quality GIF Encoder

21. Create videos from PDF files

I collected many PDF files, mostly Linux tutorials, over the years and saved in my
Tablet PC. Sometimes I feel too lazy to read them from the tablet. So, I decided to
create a video from PDF files and watch it in a big screen devices like a TV or a
Computer. If you ever wondered how to make a movie file from a collection of PDF
files, the following guide will help.

How To Create A Video From PDF Files In Linux

22. Rotate Videos

If you have video files with different orientation (portrait or landscape), you can rotate
them as described in the following guide.

How To Rotate Videos Using FFMpeg From Commandline

23. Getting help

In this guide, I have covered the most commonly used FFmpeg commands. It has a lot
more different options to do various advanced functions. To learn more about it, refer
the man page.

$ man ffmpeg

Related read:

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Youtube-dl Tutorial With Examples For Beginners

And, that’s all. I hope this guide will help you to getting started with FFmpeg.

Thanks for stopping by!

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