FFmpeg is a command line program to manipulate, convert, record and stream video and audio, it is available for Mac, Linux and Windows. Here is a handy list of commands for reference, these have been tested with version 3.1.12 in a Debian Linux environment. I expect this list to grow over time as needs arise.
• Rescale a 4K video to 1080p
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset slow -vf scale=1920:1080 outFile.mp4 |
• Convert to H.264 (AVC) codec for use on uploading to YouTube, Vimeo, etc:
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mov -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 outputFile.mp4 |
Using this codec reduces the time it takes for the video to be available after upload, however YouTube converts the file again to the VP9 codec and unless you have a popular channel, 100 subscribers or more, then this can take a few days or weeks and in the meantime your video can appear quite poor and blocky even when watching at 1080p, especially when there is a lot of movement like in a car dash-cam video. You can use FFmpeg to encode to VP9 webm format with this bash script:
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#!/bin/bash INFILE="$1" PASS1="-pass 1 -b:v 1000K -threads 8 -speed 4 -tile-columns 6 -frame-parallel 1" PASS2="-pass 2 -b:v 1000K -threads 8 -speed 1 -tile-columns 6 -frame-parallel 1 -auto-alt-ref 1" FILENAME=$(basename "$INFILE" | cut -d. -f1) if [[ -z "${FILENAME// }" ]]; then echo "filename missing" exit 1 fi OUTFILE="$FILENAME".webm ffmpeg -y -i "$INFILE" -c:v libvpx-vp9 $PASS1 -g 9999 -aq-mode 0 -an -f webm /dev/null ffmpeg -y -i "$INFILE" -c:v libvpx-vp9 $PASS2 -lag-in-frames 25 -g 9999 -aq-mode 0 -c:a libopus -b:a 64k -f webm "$OUTFILE" |
This script is based on the encoding method shown in the WebM Wiki on my computer it is very slow and takes a quite a few hours to encode just nine minutes of video and the eventual results are so poor you’ll be wondering why you bothered.
• Convert to MP4 for use in Vegas Studio:
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mkv -codec copy outputFile.mp4 |
If you have a particularly old/odd video and get lots of pts has no value errors, then try this:
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ffmpeg -fflags +genpts -i inputFile.mpg -codec copy outputFile.mp4 |
The -fflags +genpts option adds a Presentation Timestamp (PTS) to the frames, this must be before the -i as shown to work. Source.
• Set the video playback speed, this method adjusts the Presentation Timestamp (PTS) on each frame which may not work with older software. To slow down video divide the PTS by your required speed, this example slows the action by two times setpts=PTS/2.0. You can also reduce the number of dropped frames by increasing the frame-rate -r 50, in this case I went from 25fps to 50fps, but depending in the chosen speed frames may still be dropped.
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mp4 -r 50 -filter:v "setpts=PTS/2.0" outputfile.mp4 |
Speed up your video by multiplying the PTS, in this case two times faster: setpts=PTS*2.0
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mp4 -filter:v "setpts=PTS*2.0" outputfile.mp4 |
• Convert file or extract audio from file into an MP3, the output is set to 128K constant bitrate
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mp4 -vn -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 128k outputFile.mp3 |
• Concatenate Video Files
This combines two video files, when using formats such as MP4 or MKV you will need to create intermediate files, otherwise only the first file will be included in the output:
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ffmpeg -i file1.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -f mpegts file1_inter.ts ffmpeg -i file2.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -f mpegts file2_inter.ts ffmpeg -i "concat:file1_inter.ts|file2_inter.ts" -f mp4 -vcodec libx265 outputFile.mp4 |
• The opus not found error
When converting a file and you see an error like Could not find tag for codec opus in stream #1… you will need to state the output format
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ffmpeg -i inputFile.mkv -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 outputFile.mp4 |
Links and Sources
- https://www.ffmpeg.org/
- FFmpeg Wiki: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki