FFMPEG Cheat Sheet

horsing around

My favourite is how easy it is to generate animated gifs.

Since I'm a Linux user (and even on OSX), I find that some software has poor support for different types of file formats. I use ffmpeg to quickly convert files from one codec to another. Sometimes it can also be used to export frames. FFMPEG is also quite easy to use to batch convert a bunch of videos.

The only hurdle with FFMPEG is that it is primarily a command line tool. For some, this is a bit of a daunting task.

I've made a quick cheat sheet that I tend to use on a regular basis and I'll continue to add to this list when I discover more useful commands.

Visit ffmpeg.org for more info

batch:

for i in *.mov; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -c:v prores -profile:v 3 -c:a copy "./wip_prores/${i%.*}_wip_prores.mov";done

Quick convert:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.mov

exr to QT:

ffmpeg -y -i input.%04d.exr -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset slow -crf 17 output.mov

prores HQ:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v prores -profile:v 3 -c:a copy output.mov

prores options between v 0 to v 5

-profile: v0 =proxy
-v 1 = LT
-v 2 = LQ
-v 3 = 4444
-v 4 = 4444hq

video to frames:

ffmpeg -i input.mov output.%04d.jpg

exr to video

ffmpeg -y -gamma 2.2 -i input.%04d.exr -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset slow -crf 18 -r 25 output.mov

frames to video (-r = fps):

ffmpeg -r 24 -start_number 1 -i input.%04d.jpg -c:v prores -profile:v 3 -c:a copy output.mov

frames to video (preview quality)

ffmpeg -r 24 -f image2 -start_number 1 -i input.%04d.jpg -vcodec libx264 -crf 15 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

video to gif:

ffmpeg -i input.%04d.jpg -vf "fps=24, scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos" output.gif

optional flags:

-vf "fps=24, scale=320:-1:flags=lanczos"

fps = frames per second

scale = width of image

-1 = scale height proportionally

lanczos = scaling filter https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-scaler.html

Extract video:

ffmpeg -i inputVideo.mp4 -ss 00:03 -to 00:08 -c:v libx264 -crf 30 trim_opseek_encode.mp4

Extract audio:

ffmpeg -i audio.aac -acodec libmp3lame audio.mp3
ffmpeg -i audio.aac audio.wav
ffmpeg -i audio.aac -acodec ac3 audio.ac3
ffmpeg -i audio.aac -libvorbis audio.ogg

Concatenate video:

ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -c copy out.mp4

file 'zoom_0_b.mp4'

file 'zoom_0_a.mp4'

Speed up / Slow down video:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:v "setpts=0.5*PTS" output.mkv
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:v "setpts=2.0*PTS" output.mkv

If you happen to have some useful and easy tricks using FFMPEG, let me know and I'll add it to the list.