ffmpeg recipes

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ffmpeg recipes
by Jeremy Osborne, 2014.02.16 21:46:06

The following are ffmpeg commands that I found useful for video
editing (mainly for recorded screencasts and Youtube videos). I've
given a rough description of each command, followed by my
explanation of the commandline options, followed by the command
itself. I assume you will modify the commands to suit your needs.
All commands based on version Mar 22 2013 08:56:38 of ffmpeg,
which is a newer version compared to a lot of the help material I found
for ffmpeg on the web. Most of these commands are tested on
Windows versions of ffmpeg, despite that I often use Unix multi-line
escapes to break up long commands.

Concatenate (join) a selection of videos (in

different formats and containers) into one
final video
This command concatenates and performs a lossy transcoding on the
videos. For my purposes this is okay, but please know you will be
degrading the quality of your videos by doing this.
The original template for this command came from the ffmpeg wiki
page How to concatenate (join, merge) media files.

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ffmpeg recipes

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#
-i 2.mp4 -i 3.mp4 -i 4.mp4 -i 5.mp4 -i 6.mp4
#
The input videos. I have 5 videos in
this command.
#
Input order is important when ffmpeg
needs to reference
#
the video by index.
#
2.mp4 will be referenced by index 0
because it is first.
#
5.mp4, being the fourth video, is
referenced by index 3.
#
ffmpeg uses 0-based indexing (as most
nerd things do for
#
historical reasoning).
#
-filter_complex "[0:0] [0:1] [1:0] [1:1]
[2:0] [2:1] [3:0] [3:1] [4:0] [4:1]
concat=n=5:v=1:a=1 [v] [a]"
#
Perform a complex filtering of input to
output.
#
Since we know 2.mp4 maps to index of
zero, I could describe the
#
above as:
#
#
[0:0] [0:1]
#
Takes the video stream of 2.mp4,
denoted as [0:0], and the audio
#
stream of 2.mp4, denoted as [0:1],
and includes them in the concat
#
process. These values were true for
my videos, although it is
#
possible you will be concatenating
different streams than me.
#
#
And with that mapping, we are stating
"Take the audio and
#
video streams of all of my input videos
and..."
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Crop a section of a video

Sometimes I want to crop just a rectangle of the original video and
turn that into a whole other video.

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#
-i capture.avi
#
The input video.
#
-filter:v crop=1280:960:0:32
#
Apply a filter to the video streams.
#
Take a 1280 pixel wide by 960 pixel tall
#
video window from the input, and offset
this
#
1280x960 rectangle 0 pixels from the
left side
#
(aka. the cropping begins from the
original left side)
#
and 32 pixels down from the top.
#
-c:v libx264
#
Use the libx264 video codec (h.264
encoder).
#
-preset slow
#
From the ffmpeg x264 encoding wiki:
#
A preset is a collection of options that
will provide
#
a certain encoding speed to compression
ratio.
#
-crf 18
#
From the ffmpeg x264 encoding wiki:
#
crf stands for constant rate factor. The
range of the
#
quantizer scale is 0-51; where 0 is
lossless, 23 is
#
default, and 51 is worst possible.
#
Consider 18 to be visually lossless.
#
-b:a 128k
#
Set audio bitrate to 128k.
#
-c:a libmp3lame
#
Use the lame library for MP3 encoding.
#
-threads 0
#
Let ffmpeg decide how many threads to use
#
for encoding (if it even chooses to use
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DOSBox + Fraps conversions

Tools and setup
DOSBox version 0.74
The DOS emulator that allows me to play old DOS games.
Change the frameskip of a game to 2 (or maybe 1). This will
cutdown on lag sync problems and keep the game from
grinding the system to a hault.
Change the number of cycles devoted to the game (test out to
see what works). For example, for my Warlords recording I
gave the game 3000 fixed cycles. This seemed to work,
somewhat.
Use the ddraw renderer.
If the game is old, try different scalings. I've used the hq2x
and hq3x to great effect.
D-Fend Reloaded version 1.3.3
DOSBox frontend. Not required, but makes my life easier.
ffmpeg version Jan 20 2013 23:39:19
Commandline video file editor and converter.
Fraps version 3.5.9
I just couldn't get DOSBox video to sync to the voice over
audio with Audacity, so I resorted to Fraps for ingame
commentary.
Microphone
In the Windows Input Devices setup, I set the microphone
properties to 2 channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz.

Post processing with ffmpeg

Test: 45 minute example of Master of Magic (10000 cycles, 2
frameskip, ddraw renderer, hq3x scaling) produced an in sync
audio+video recording at 13.6 GB in size.
The conversion below decreased the size of the video .5 GB and at the
same time doubled the video scale, while also removing the black lines
generated by the scaling of the hq3x filter in my monitor.

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#
-i capture.avi
#
input file
#
-filter:v crop=1280:960:0:32
#
Take the video stream and crop it within
a
#
box of dimensions 1280x960, and position
#
the box 0 pixels from the left and 32
pixels
#
from the top.
#
-sws_flags lanczos+full_chroma_inp
#
using lanczos with full chroma input flag
#
-s 2560x1920
#
Size to scale to
#
(which is double the cropped, scaled
#
video size of 1280x960).
#
-c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 18
#
Use the x264 encoder and some settings
#
that I can't quite explain.
#
-b:a 128k
#
Set audio bitrate to 128k.
#
-c:a libmp3lame
#
Use the lame library for MP3 encoding.
#
-threads 0
#
ffmpeg decide how many threads to use
#
for encoding (if more than one).
#
-pix_fmt yuv420p
#
Pixel formatting for the video.
#
upload.mkv
#
The output file.
ffmpeg -i capture.avi -filter:v
crop=1280:960:0:32 -sws_flags
lanczos+full_chroma_inp -s 2560x1920 -c:v libx264
-preset slow -crf 18 -b:a 128k -c:a libmp3lame
-threads 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p upload.mkv

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Extract the audio as a wav file from a video

#
-i capture.avi
#
The original video.
#
-ac 2
#
Copy the audio as stereo.
#
-ar 44100
#
Audio sampling frequency of 44100 Hz.
#
-vn
#
Don't copy over any video.
#
capture_audio.wav
#
Save as a wav format audio encoding
(determined by file extension).
ffmpeg -i capture.avi -ac 2 -ar 44100 -vn
capture_audio.wav

Extract just the video without the audio

#
-i capture.avi
#
The original video.
#
-an
#
No audio is copied to the output.
#
-c:v copy
#
Copy the video streams without
reencoding.
#
just_video.avi
#
Output into a new file.
ffmpeg -i capture.avi -an -c:v copy
capture_video.avi

Iterate through a bunch of videos and

convert them
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# Windows Powershell
# For every MP4 file in the directory
# convert to h264
# copy the audio
# color scheme in yuv420p
# and output file with the same basename
# except switch container (and file extension) to
Matroska.
for %F IN (*.mp4) DO (ffmpeg -i %F -c:v libx264
-preset slow -crf 23 -c:a copy -threads 0
-pix_fmt yuv420p %~nF.mkv)

Mix a separate audio and video file together

into one output

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#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#

-i capture_video.avi
The first input file.
-i remixed_audio.mp3
The second input file.
-map 0
Map all of the streams from the first
input into the output video, in order.
-map 1
Map all of the streams from the second
input into the output video, in order.
-c copy
Do not reencode any streams, use the same
encoding.
output.mkv
Output into the Matroska container format
(detected by the file extension).

ffmpeg -i capture_video.avi -i remixed_audio.mp3 \

-map 0 -map 1 -c copy intermediate2.mkv

Upscale a video (make the pixel dimensions

bigger in the output)
This particular formula worked for me when I was needing to upscale a
video with a lot of text in it. The text was still readable. I'm not an
expert on video editing, but after some reading, and given I was
concerned with quality, it appears that the Lanczos filter is probably
the best that ffmpeg has to offer for detailed things like text. The
downside is that it is pretty slow.

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#
-i capture.avi
#
The input video.
#
-sws_flags lanczos+full_chroma_inp
#
Use the lanczos filter with full chroma
input
#
during the resize process.
#
-s 2560x1840
#
Width x Height in pixels to scale
#
the output video to.
#
-c:v libx264
#
Use the libx264 video codec (h.264
encoder).
#
-preset slow
#
From the ffmpeg x264 encoding wiki:
#
A preset is a collection of options that
will provide
#
a certain encoding speed to compression
ratio.
#
-crf 18
#
From the ffmpeg x264 encoding wiki:
#
crf stands for constant rate factor. The
range of the
#
quantizer scale is 0-51; where 0 is
lossless, 23 is
#
default, and 51 is worst possible.
#
Consider 18 to be visually lossless.
#
-b:a 128k
#
Set audio bitrate to 128k.
#
-c:a libmp3lame
#
Use the lame library for MP3 encoding.
#
-threads 0
#
Let ffmpeg decide how many threads to use
#
for encoding (if it even chooses to use
more than one).
#
-pix_fmt yuv420p
#
Pixel format / color scheme.
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References
The following links were the ones that helped me the most with
figuring out how to use ffmpeg.
http://blog.superuser.com/2012/02/24/ffmpeg-the-ultimatevideo-and-audio-manipulation-tool/
http://ingomar.wesp.name/2011/04/dosbox-gameplay-videocapture.html
http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/EncodeforYouTube
http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/x264EncodingGuide

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