Ffmpeg

This page gives some detailed information about how to use ffmpeg to convert images to video, video to images, and video to video.

One of the most common uses I have for ffmpeg is stitching together lots of individual images to create a video. This is useful for, say, outputting plots from Matplotlib or Matlab at regular intervals, then stitching them together into a single video at the end.

Installing

ffmpeg is an all-in-one video conversion swiss army knife. The power of ffmpeg lies in its ability to convert just about anything to just about anything else.

You can do a number of different operations, but these can be grouped into a few categories, as they are here: image-to-video, video-to-image, and video-to-video.

2016 update: use brew!

If you're on a Mac, you can now use Brew to install ffmpeg! This saves you the headache of downloading/installing a dozen dependencies.

Getting the source

You can go to http://ffmpeg.org/download.html to download either a bleeding-edge SVN or Git version, or a release version.

Configuring

There's a very helpful guide to installing ffmpeg here: http://howto-pages.org/ffmpeg/

The executive summary is,

# Run configure
# Run make
# Run make install
./configure          \
 --enable-gpl        \
 --enable-liba52     \
 --enable-libxvid    \
 --enable-libamr_nb  \
 --enable-libamr_wb  \
 --enable-libmp3lame \
 --enable-libogg     \
 --enable-libvorbis  \
 --enable-libfaac    \
 --enable-libfaad    \
 --enable-shared     \
 --extra-cflags="-I/path/to/some/include -I/path/to/another/include" \
 --extra-libs="-L/path/to/some/lib -libsomelibrary -L/path/to/another/lib -libanotherlibrary"

--enable-liba52 is for encoding/decoding AC3 aduio

--enable-libxvid is for encoding/decoding using the DivX standard (which uses the XviD library, available at http://xvid.org)

--enable-libamr_nb and --enable-libamr_wb is for encoding/decoding narrowband and wideband audio streams from cellphones (linux-friendly versions of these libaries are available at http://www.penguin.cz/~utx/amr)

--enable-libmp3lame allows encoding/decoding MP3s

--enable-libogg and --enable-libvorbis and --enable-libfaac and --enable-libfaad allow you to stick it to the (fee-charging MP3-owning) man by using a free codec, available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/

--extra-cflags allows you to point the compiler to include files that are not in standard locations (/usr/lib or /usr/local/lib). Useful if the codecs mentioned above are installed to non-standard locations.

--extra-libs allows you to point the compiler to additional libraries. Useful if the codecs mentioned above are installed to non-standard locations.

Using

It is easy to see the flexibility and limitless combinations of conversions possible by typing

$ ffmpeg

which returns all of the options available:

usage: ffmpeg [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}... Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder Main options: -L show license -h show help -version show version -formats show available formats, codecs, protocols, ... -f fmt force format -img img_fmt force image format -i filename input file name -y overwrite output files -t duration set the recording time -fs limit_size set the limit file size -ss time_off set the start time offset -itsoffset time_off set the input ts offset -title string set the title -timestamp time set the timestamp -author string set the author -copyright string set the copyright -comment string set the comment -v verbose control amount of logging -target type specify target file type ("vcd", "svcd", "dvd", "dv", "dv50", "pal-vcd", "ntsc-svcd", ...) -dframes number set the number of data frames to record -scodec codec force subtitle codec ('copy' to copy stream) -newsubtitle add a new subtitle stream to the current output stream -slang code set the ISO 639 language code (3 letters) of the current subtitle stream Video options: -b bitrate set video bitrate (in kbit/s) -vframes number set the number of video frames to record -r rate set frame rate (Hz value, fraction or abbreviation) -s size set frame size (WxH or abbreviation) -aspect aspect set aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9 or 1.3333, 1.7777) -croptop size set top crop band size (in pixels) -cropbottom size set bottom crop band size (in pixels) -cropleft size set left crop band size (in pixels) -cropright size set right crop band size (in pixels) -padtop size set top pad band size (in pixels) -padbottom size set bottom pad band size (in pixels) -padleft size set left pad band size (in pixels) -padright size set right pad band size (in pixels) -padcolor color set color of pad bands (Hex 000000 thru FFFFFF) -vn disable video -bt tolerance set video bitrate tolerance (in kbit/s) -maxrate bitrate set max video bitrate tolerance (in kbit/s) -minrate bitrate set min video bitrate tolerance (in kbit/s) -bufsize size set ratecontrol buffer size (in kByte) -vcodec codec force video codec ('copy' to copy stream) -sameq use same video quality as source (implies VBR) -pass n select the pass number (1 or 2) -passlogfile file select two pass log file name -newvideo add a new video stream to the current output stream Advanced Video options: -pix_fmt format set pixel format -g gop_size set the group of picture size -intra use only intra frames -vdt n discard threshold -qscale q use fixed video quantiser scale (VBR) -qmin q min video quantiser scale (VBR) -qmax q max video quantiser scale (VBR) -lmin lambda min video lagrange factor (VBR) -lmax lambda max video lagrange factor (VBR) -mblmin q min macroblock quantiser scale (VBR) -mblmax q max macroblock quantiser scale (VBR) -qdiff q max difference between the quantiser scale (VBR) -qblur blur video quantiser scale blur (VBR) -qsquish squish how to keep quantiser between qmin and qmax (0 = clip, 1 = use differentiable function) -qcomp compression video quantiser scale compression (VBR) -rc_init_cplx complexity initial complexity for 1-pass encoding -b_qfactor factor qp factor between p and b frames -i_qfactor factor qp factor between p and i frames -b_qoffset offset qp offset between p and b frames -i_qoffset offset qp offset between p and i frames -ibias bias intra quant bias -pbias bias inter quant bias -rc_eq equation set rate control equation -rc_override override rate control override for specific intervals -me method set motion estimation method -me_threshold motion estimaton threshold -mb_threshold macroblock threshold -bf frames use 'frames' B frames -preme pre motion estimation -bug param workaround not auto detected encoder bugs -strict strictness how strictly to follow the standards -deinterlace deinterlace pictures -psnr calculate PSNR of compressed frames -vstats dump video coding statistics to file -vhook module insert video processing module -intra_matrix matrix specify intra matrix coeffs -inter_matrix matrix specify inter matrix coeffs -top top=1/bottom=0/auto=-1 field first -sc_threshold threshold scene change threshold -me_range range limit motion vectors range (1023 for DivX player) -dc precision intra_dc_precision -mepc factor (1.0 = 256) motion estimation bitrate penalty compensation -vtag fourcc/tag force video tag/fourcc -skip_threshold threshold frame skip threshold -skip_factor factor frame skip factor -skip_exp exponent frame skip exponent -genpts generate pts -qphist show QP histogram Audio options: -aframes number set the number of audio frames to record -ab bitrate set audio bitrate (in kbit/s) -aq quality set audio quality (codec-specific) -ar rate set audio sampling rate (in Hz) -ac channels set number of audio channels -an disable audio -acodec codec force audio codec ('copy' to copy stream) -vol volume change audio volume (256=normal) -newaudio add a new audio stream to the current output stream -alang code set the ISO 639 language code (3 letters) of the current audio stream Advanced Audio options: -atag fourcc/tag force audio tag/fourcc Subtitle options: -scodec codec force subtitle codec ('copy' to copy stream) -newsubtitle add a new subtitle stream to the current output stream -slang code set the ISO 639 language code (3 letters) of the current subtitle stream Audio/Video grab options: -vd device set video grab device -vc channel set video grab channel (DV1394 only) -tvstd standard set television standard (NTSC, PAL (SECAM)) -ad device set audio device -grab format request grabbing using -gd device set grab device Advanced options: -map file:stream[:syncfile:syncstream] set input stream mapping -map_meta_data outfile:infile set meta data information of outfile from infile -benchmark add timings for benchmarking -dump dump each input packet -hex when dumping packets, also dump the payload -re read input at native frame rate -loop_input loop (current only works with images) -loop_output number of times to loop output in formats that support looping (0 loops forever) -threads count thread count -vsync video sync method -async audio sync method -vglobal video global header storage type -copyts copy timestamps -shortest finish encoding within shortest input -dts_delta_threshold timestamp discontinuity delta threshold -ps size set packet size in bits -error rate error rate -muxrate rate set mux rate -packetsize size set packet size -muxdelay seconds set the maximum demux-decode delay -muxpreload seconds set the initial demux-decode delay

Conversion operations

Images to video

Before you begin

If you have a big set of images, ffmpeg can convert them into a video. You have your choice of options: image format, video format, frames per second, bitrate, quality, etc etc etc.

There are a few things you have to do. First, your images have to be sequentially numbered, starting at 0 or 1. This means your files should be in the form

$ ls
file0001.jpg
file0002.jpg
file0003.jpg
file0004.jpg
file0005.jpg

etc... (Note that they don't have to be jpg format, that's just an example).

When you point ffmpeg to your images, you can't use the usual bash syntax, like ffmpeg -i file*.jpg (the -i is the flag telling ffmpeg which files are the input files). You have to use printf format, like this:

$ ffmpeg -i file%04d.jpg ...

where %04d means "a 4-digit number, zero-filled," and ffmpeg starts the number at 0 or 1.

You could also do:

$ ffmpeg -i file0%03d.jpg ...

where %03d means "a 3-digit number, zero-filled," and the 0 in front means the digit before that number is always 0.

Mass-Renaming Tricks

Main article: Renaming

I had a bunch of files numbered sequentially from 400 to 740, and I needed the numbering to start at 1 and go to 341. To rename them, I used a Bash for loop with a little bit of Bash Math:

#!/bin/sh

for i in {400..740}; do 
    mv "moment_000000_t`printf "%04d" ${i}`.jpeg" "moment_000000_t`printf "%04d" $((i-399))`.jpeg"
done

Picking a video format

To see a list of video formats available to ffmpeg, you can run ffmpeg with the formats command:

$ ffmpeg -formats File formats: E 3g2 3gp2 format E 3gp 3gp format D 4xm 4X Technologies format D RoQ Id RoQ format D aac ADTS AAC DE ac3 raw ac3 E adts ADTS AAC DE aiff Audio IFF DE alaw pcm A law format DE amr 3gpp amr file format DE asf asf format E asf_stream asf format DE au SUN AU Format DE avi avi format D avs avs format E crc crc testing format D daud D-Cinema audio format D dts raw dts DE dv DV video format E dvd MPEG2 PS format (DVD VOB) D ea Electronic Arts Multimedia Format DE ffm ffm format D film_cpk Sega FILM/CPK format D flic FLI/FLC/FLX animation format DE flv flv format E framecrc framecrc testing format DE gif GIF Animation DE h261 raw h261 DE h263 raw h263 DE h264 raw H264 video format D idcin Id CIN format DE image image sequence DE image2 image2 sequence DE image2pipe piped image2 sequence DE imagepipe piped image sequence D ingenient Ingenient MJPEG D ipmovie Interplay MVE format DE m4v raw MPEG4 video format D matroska Matroska file format DE mjpeg MJPEG video D mm American Laser Games MM format DE mmf mmf format E mov mov format D mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 QuickTime/MPEG4/Motion JPEG 2000 format E mp2 MPEG audio layer 2 DE mp3 MPEG audio layer 3 E mp4 mp4 format DE mpeg MPEG1 System format E mpeg1video MPEG video E mpeg2video MPEG2 video DE mpegts MPEG2 transport stream format D mpegvideo MPEG video E mpjpeg Mime multipart JPEG format DE mulaw pcm mu law format D nsv NullSoft Video format E null null video format DE nut nut format D nuv NuppelVideo format D ogg Ogg E psp psp mp4 format D psxstr Sony Playstation STR format DE rawvideo raw video format D redir Redirector format DE rm rm format E rtp RTP output format D rtsp RTSP input format DE s16be pcm signed 16 bit big endian format DE s16le pcm signed 16 bit little endian format DE s8 pcm signed 8 bit format D sdp SDP D shn raw shorten D smk Smacker Video D sol Sierra SOL Format E svcd MPEG2 PS format (VOB) DE swf Flash format D tta true-audio DE u16be pcm unsigned 16 bit big endian format DE u16le pcm unsigned 16 bit little endian format DE u8 pcm unsigned 8 bit format E vcd MPEG1 System format (VCD) D vmd Sierra VMD format E vob MPEG2 PS format (VOB) DE voc Creative Voice File format DE wav wav format D wc3movie Wing Commander III movie format D wsaud Westwood Studios audio format D wsvqa Westwood Studios VQA format DE yuv4mpegpipe YUV4MPEG pipe format Image formats (filename extensions, if any, follow): DE gif gif Codecs: D V 4xm D V D 8bps DEA aac D V D aasc DEA ac3 DEA adpcm_4xm DEA adpcm_adx DEA adpcm_ct DEA adpcm_ea DEA adpcm_ima_dk3 DEA adpcm_ima_dk4 DEA adpcm_ima_qt DEA adpcm_ima_smjpeg DEA adpcm_ima_wav DEA adpcm_ima_ws DEA adpcm_ms DEA adpcm_sbpro_2 DEA adpcm_sbpro_3 DEA adpcm_sbpro_4 DEA adpcm_swf DEA adpcm_xa DEA adpcm_yamaha D A alac DEA amr_nb DEA amr_wb DEV D asv1 DEV D asv2 D V D avs D V bmp D V D camstudio D V D camtasia D V D cinepak D V D cljr D A cook D V D cyuv DES dvbsub DES dvdsub DEV D dvvideo DEV D ffv1 DEVSD ffvhuff D A flac D V D flic DEVSD flv D V D fraps DEA g726 DEV D h261 DEVSDT h263 D VSD h263i EV h263p DEV DT h264 DEVSD huffyuv D V D idcinvideo D V D indeo2 D V indeo3 D A interplay_dpcm D V D interplayvideo EV jpegls D V kmvc EV ljpeg D V D loco D A mace3 D A mace6 D V D mdec DEV D mjpeg D V D mjpegb D V D mmvideo DEA mp2 DEA mp3 D A mp3adu D A mp3on4 DEVSDT mpeg1video DEVSDT mpeg2video DEVSDT mpeg4 D A mpeg4aac D VSDT mpegvideo DEVSD msmpeg4 DEVSD msmpeg4v1 DEVSD msmpeg4v2 D V D msrle D V D msvideo1 D V D mszh D V D nuv DEV pam DEV pbm DEA pcm_alaw DEA pcm_mulaw DEA pcm_s16be DEA pcm_s16le DEA pcm_s24be DEA pcm_s24daud DEA pcm_s24le DEA pcm_s32be DEA pcm_s32le DEA pcm_s8 DEA pcm_u16be DEA pcm_u16le DEA pcm_u24be DEA pcm_u24le DEA pcm_u32be DEA pcm_u32le DEA pcm_u8 DEV pgm DEV pgmyuv DEV png DEV ppm D A qdm2 D V D qdraw D V D qpeg D V D qtrle DEV rawvideo D A real_144 D A real_288 D A roq_dpcm D V D roqvideo D V D rpza DEV D rv10 DEV D rv20 D A shorten D A smackaud D V smackvid D V D smc DEV snow D A sol_dpcm DEA sonic EA sonicls D V D sp5x DEV D svq1 D VSD svq3 D V theora D V D truemotion1 D V D truemotion2 D A truespeech D A tta D V D ultimotion D V vc9 D V D vcr1 D A vmdaudio D V D vmdvideo D A vorbis D V vp3 D V D vqavideo D A wmav1 D A wmav2 DEVSD wmv1 DEVSD wmv2 D V D wnv1 D A ws_snd1 D A xan_dpcm D V D xan_wc3 D V D xl EV xvid DEV D zlib D V zmbv Supported file protocols: file: pipe: udp: rtp: tcp: http: Frame size, frame rate abbreviations: ntsc pal qntsc qpal sntsc spal film ntsc-film sqcif qcif cif 4cif Motion estimation methods: zero(fastest) full(slowest) log phods epzs(default) x1 hex umh iter Note, the names of encoders and decoders dont always match, so there are several cases where the above table shows encoder only or decoder only entries even though both encoding and decoding are supported for example, the h263 decoder corresponds to the h263 and h263p encoders, for file formats its even worse

A few of the more popular video codecs include:

• mpg, mjpeg (.mpg or mpeg format; the second one is specifically for converting series of jpeg images to mpegs)
  • This format doesn't allow you to control the frame rate (it's fixed at 30)
• mov (.mov format)
• avi (.avi format)
• mpeg4 (.mp4 format)
• wmv1/wmv2 (.wmv format)
• gif (creates animated gifs, useful for short animations)

Typically you simply specify the extension of the output file, and the corresponding video codec is automatically used:

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg movie.mpg

Other times you may want to specify the video codec explicitly:

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -vcodec mov movie.mov

Video output options

While there are a plethora of options to fiddle with, there are a couple important ones.

The first is the quality of the video. This assumes you don't care about the final size of the video, you simply want to specify the quality of the final video. This can be done using the -qscale argument. This outputs a video with a quality on the scale of 1 (the very best) to 30 (the very worst).

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -qscale 1 movie.mov

If you don't specify a quality, the final video can potentially look really bad. Specifying the quality is a good way to check if the quality is bad because of the images you're using, or because of the video encoding process.

Another important option is the framerate. This controls how quickly your movie will progress. I typically use ffmpeg to visualize CFD results, and sometimes I want a slow video. To do this, I can set the framerate with the -r option, and give the value in Hz.

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -r 10 movie.mov

This option doesn't work with mpg/mpeg movie formats though.

You can also set the bitrate by using the -b option,

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -b 1200 movie.mov

And you can set the resolution to be X pixels by Y pixels with the -s XxY flag:

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -s 320x180 movie.mov

You can set the aspect ratio as well, using the -aspect option:

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -aspect 16:9 movie.mov

However, if the video is too tall/short or too wide/narrow, the picture will be distorted. If the input file is a video, you just run ffmpeg without specifying an output file or any options. However, if it's an image, you can just open it in any image editor and there should be an option to see what the resolution is.

Let's say we have a series of images that are 1200px x 900px, and we want to make them into a movie that has an aspect ratio of 16:9. The current aspect ratio is 4:3, and we want an aspect ratio of 16:9, so we have to crop the image.

Let's crop it vertically. We should get rid of 225 pixels from the top and bottom, or 112 pixels from the top and 112 pixels from the bottom. The extra pixel is ok because it will only stretch the image by 1 pixel.

$ ffmpeg -i files%04d.jpg -croptop 112 -cropbottom 112 -aspect 16:9 movie.mov

The options -cropleft and -cropright can also be used.

Just be careful not to crop any essential information from the image!

Slow Motion Video

The -r option should, in theory, slow down the framerate of the movie. However, the way it does this is pretty stupid. Instead of interpreting -r 10 as 10 frames per second, and thus using 10 images per second, it uses the default 26 frames per second, and just cuts out all but 10 images. So instead of 26 frames per second, it's 26 frames per second with the last 16 frames all being the same image.

To get around this idiocy, you can duplicate images to stretch everything out. The only downside is that this only allows an integer factor of stretching (unless you want to get fancy).

So let's say you have 100 images you want to stretch out into slow motion, and you want your video to be twice as slow. Then rename each of the 100 images so their numbers range from 1-200 but are all even (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.). Then, copy image 0 into image 1, image 2 into image 3, and so on. In this way, your frames will show up for twice the amount of time they would have originally.

So, whereas before you would have had:

image000.jpg
image001.jpg
image002.jpg
image003.jpg
image004.jpg
image005.jpg

now every even image is an original, and every odd image is a symbolic link to the corresponding original:

image000.jpg
image001.jpg -> image000.jpg
image002.jpg 
image003.jpg -> image002.jpg
image004.jpg
image005.jpg -> image004.jpg
image006.jpg
image007.jpg -> image006.jpg
image008.jpg
image009.jpg -> image008.jpg
image010.jpg
image011.jpg -> image010.jpg

You can do this with a little bit of Bash Math, as well as some of the renaming tricks listed on the Xargs page.

Video to images

A video can be converted into a set of images using the command,

ffmpeg -i movie.mpg image%03d.jpg

The output image format can also be png, jpeg, gif, or tiff.

If you want to grab a single image from the video, e.g. to create a thumbnail, you can issue the command:

ffmpeg -ss 3 -i movie.mov -f image2 -vframes 1 thumb.jpg

which will capture a thumbnail image 3 seconds into the video, using "image2" as the output format (this works for outputting jpg files, but other formats can be set with the -f option), and grabbing only N frames (set with the -vframes N option). If I wanted to grab 5 frames, and create a different image for each, I could issue the command:

ffmpeg -ss 3 -i movie.mov -f image2 -vframes 5 thumb%02d.jpg

which would yield the files thumb01.jpg,thumb02.jpg, etc...

To extract images from the video at a given rate (frames or thumbnails per second), you can use the -r N option. This will output N thumbnails for each second of video.

For example, to output 2 thumbnails per second of video:

ffmpeg -r 2 -i movie.mov -f image2 thumb%02d.jpg

The rate can also be a fraction. For example, to output 1 thumbnail for every 5 minutes (300 seconds) of video, set the rate to be 1/300:

ffmpeg -r 1/300 -i movie.mov -f image2 thumb%02d.jpg

This can also be used in combination with -vframes to limit the number of thumbnails saved. Likewise, the option -t N limits thumbnail capturing to N seconds, or -t HH:MM:SS to limit thumbnail capturing for HH hours, MM minutes, and SS seconds.

Video to video

See examples below, Ffmpeg#Video_to_video_2

Audio to Audio

One of the great features of ffmpeg is that it can convert audio files, too. If you have your songs locked up in Apple's ridiculous M4A/AAC format, you can use ffmpeg to break them out.

The easiest way to do this is to use ffmpegx, which gives a nice gui interface and makes it easy to do this.

Using the command-line interface is also very easy. To convert 1.m4a into 1.mp3:

$ ffmpeg -i 1.m4a -acodec mp3 -ac 2 -ab 128 1.mp3

Video and Audio Muxing

You can use ffmpeg to split and combine audio and video streams. A couple of common operations real quick:

Removing Audio from Video

Here's how to remove audio from a video with an audio track:

ffmpeg -i movie_withsound.mov -vcodec copy -an movie_nosound.mov

The -vcodec copy means copy the video, the -an means use nothing for the audio.

Muxing Audio with Video

Video Has No Sound

If you have an audio file, and a video file with no sound, you can mux the two like this:

$ ffmpeg -i sound.mp3 -i movie_nosound.avi -acodec copy -vcodec copy movie_withsound.avi

Video Has Sound

If the video already has sound, and you want to replace it with a different audio track, you can do this:

$ ffmpeg -i sound.mp3 -i movie_withsound.avi -map 0:0 -map 1:0 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -shortest movie_withdifferentsound.avi

Here, the map arguments refer to the streams: numbered 0 and 1.

The first -map 0:0 means copy the video from stream 0 to stream 0. (Keep the original video.)

The second -map 1:0 means copy the audio from stream 1 to stream 0. (Copy the sound file stream into the new video stream.)

You can imagine that these notations would get particularly handy if you're dealing with multiple video files and multiple audio tracks.

Shortening

What if the length of your video and your audio are different? By default, ffmpeg is conservative and doesn't delete anything. The length of the final video will be the length of the longer of the two videos (a three minute video track and a ten minute audio track will result in seven minutes of black screen).

You can tell ffmpeg to trim the length to the shortest of the two, by using the -shortest flag.

Gifs

See Gifs (specifically the Gifs#ffmpeg section) for how to use ffmpeg to create/convert gifs.

Scripts, tricks, and tips

There's a very handy method for renaming files covered here: Xargs#Moving_Files

Examples

Images to video

mpeg

# Convert a set of .jpeg images to an .mpeg movie
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg movie_noqual.mpg

# Specify a high quality
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -qscale 1 movie_hiqual.mpg

# Explicitly specify the video codec
$ ffmpeg -i 

# You can't specify a frame rate with the mpeg video codec...
# This will throw an error!
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -qscale 1 -r 10 movie_highqual_framerate10.mpg

mp4

# Convert a set of .jpeg images to an .mp4 movie
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -vcodec mpeg4 movie_noqual.mp4

# Specify a high quality
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -vcodec mpeg4 -qscale 1 movie_hiqual.mp4

# Set a framerate of 10 fps (default is 30 fps)
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -vcodec mpeg4 -qscale 1 -r 10 movie_hiqual_framerate10.mp4

mov

# Convert a set of .jpeg images to a .mov movie
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg movie_noqual.mov

# Specify a high quality
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -qscale 1 movie_highqual.mov

# Set a framerate of 20 fps (default is 30 fps)
$ ffmpeg -i moment0_instant_%03d.jpeg -qscale 1 -r 20 movie_highqual_framerate20.mov

Video to video

mov to mpg

# Convert an .mov file into an .mpg file
$ ffmpeg -i input.mov -r 25 -qscale 1 output.mpg

# You can also specify the bitrate:
$ ffmpeg -i input.mov -r 25 -b 7500000 -qscale 1 output.mpg

Combining Videos

Same Resolution

If we want to combine two videos and display them side-by-side in-frame, we can use the pad and overlay features. Links:

• ffmpeg pad adds padding to the input image: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#pad
• ffmpeg overlay overlays one video on another: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#overlay-1

The basic strategy is to pad the left video with extra spacing on the right side, then overlay the right video in the extra space created.

ffmpeg -i maya.mp4 -i cronus.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v:0]pad=width=iw*2:ih[bg]; [bg][1:v:0]overlay=w" output.mp4

The first thing the command does is provide two inputs with the -i flags. Next, the -filter_complex flag will filter/process/combine the inputs and combine them into a single video. Basically we feed filter complex a string, which contains a command that will combine the videos in some particular way.

The command that is passed to filter_complex starts with [0:v:0] and later has a [1:v:0], where the left side of the v refers to which input, and the right side of the output refers to which output. In this case we have two inputs, so the 0 and 1 refer to maya.mp4 or cronus.mp4, respectively. There is only one output so we probably don't need the :0 at the end, but we add it anyway just to be sure.

We are telling filter complex to pad the first video by doubling it, and then we overlay the second video. There is a bit of magic [1] happening here, but the [bg] placement tells it which video to put on which side. Finally, we tell the command where to output all of this stuff.

My final result looked awful because the two videos had completely different resolutions. Thus, I had to make do.

Different Resolutions

I had a high-resolution and a low-resolution video, and didn't want to reduce the resolution of both to be poor, so I modified the above overlay command to eliminate the padding:

ffmpeg -i maya.mp4 -i cronus.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v:0]pad=0[bg]; [bg][1:v:0]overlay=w" output.mp4

This led to the following video output: https://vimeo.com/229620373