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19 ffmpeg commands for all needs

Published on September 22nd, 2008 by Jean-Baptiste Jung. 149 Comments - 


ffmpeg is a multiplatform, open-source library for video and audio files. I have compiled 19 useful and amazing commands covering almost all needs: video conversion, sound extraction, encoding file for iPod or PSP, and more.

Getting infos from a video file
ffmpeg -i video.avi
Turn X images to a video sequence
ffmpeg -f image2 -i image%d.jpg video.mpg

This command will transform all the images from the current directory (named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, etc&) to a video file named video.mpg.
Turn a video to X images
ffmpeg -i video.mpg image%d.jpg

This command will generate the files named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, &

The following image formats are also availables : PGM, PPM, PAM, PGMYUV, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, SGI. 
Encode a video sequence for the iPpod/iPhone
ffmpeg -i source_video.avi input -acodec aac -ab 128kb -vcodec mpeg4 -b 1200kb -mbd 2 -flags +4mv+trell -aic 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -s 320x180 -title X final_video.mp4

Explanations :
Source : source_video.avi
Audio codec : aac
Audio bitrate : 128kb/s
Video codec : mpeg4
Video bitrate : 1200kb/s
Video size : 320px par 180px
Generated video : final_video.mp4
Encode video for the PSP
ffmpeg -i source_video.avi -b 300 -s 320x240 -vcodec xvid -ab 32 -ar 24000 -acodec aac final_video.mp4

Explanations :
Source : source_video.avi
Audio codec : aac
Audio bitrate : 32kb/s
Video codec : xvid
Video bitrate : 1200kb/s
Video size : 320px par 180px
Generated video : final_video.mp4
Extracting sound from a video, and save it as Mp3
ffmpeg -i source_video.avi -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192 -f mp3 sound.mp3

Explanations :
Source video : source_video.avi
Audio bitrate : 192kb/s
output format : mp3
Generated sound : sound.mp3
Convert a wav file to Mp3
ffmpeg -i son_origine.avi -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 192 -f mp3 son_final.mp3
Convert .avi video to .mpg
ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi video_finale.mpg
Convert .mpg to .avi
ffmpeg -i video_origine.mpg video_finale.avi
Convert .avi to animated gif(uncompressed)
ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi gif_anime.gif
Mix a video with a sound file
ffmpeg -i son.wav -i video_origine.avi video_finale.mpg
Convert .avi to .flv
ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -ab 56 -ar 44100 -b 200 -r 15 -s 320x240 -f flv video_finale.flv
Convert .avi to dv
ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -s pal -r pal -aspect 4:3 -ar 48000 -ac 2 video_finale.dv

Or:
ffmpeg -i video_origine.avi -target pal-dv video_finale.dv