Skip to main content

FFMPEG cheatsheet

· 2 min read
Anton Ilinykh

Here you can find some usefull tips of using ffmpeg library

a sample video file to play with
curl -o input.mp4 https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4

Show detailed information about video file​

the ffprobe works with images as well

ffprobe -v error -of json -show_streams -show_format input.mp4

Resize to desired width/height​

  • explicit size: scale=640:480
  • resize only by width: scale=640:-1
  • resize only by height: scale=-1:480
  • to make a thumbnail just specify output.jpg as output file
ffmpeg -v error -y -i input.mp4 -ss 00:00:01.000 -vframes 1 \
    -filter:v scale=320:-1 output.mp4

Split video by size​

  • split video by 50MB
  • specify offset as -ss 00:10:00
ffmpeg -v error -y -i input.mp4 -fs 50000000 output.mp4

Use -map_metadata to keep id3 tags​

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map 1 -c copy output.mp4
  • copy global metadata
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map_metadata 0 -c copy output.mp4
  • copy video stream metadata only
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map_metadata:s:v 0:s:v -c copy output.mp4
  • copy audio stream metadata only
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -map_metadata:s:a 0:s:a -c copy output.mp4

Convert to 1080p​

ffmpeg -v error -stats -i input.mp4 -map_metadata 0:g -s hd1080 \
    -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a aac -strict -2 output.mp4

Convert video to .gif​

ffmpeg -v error -stats -i input.mp4 -y \
    -vf fps=10,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen palette.png

ffmpeg -v error -stats -i input.mp4 -i palette.png -filter_complex \
    "fps=10,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse" output.gif

rm palette.png

Rotate video​

  • 0 = 90CounterCLockwise and Vertical Flip (default)
  • 1 = 90Clockwise
  • 2 = 90CounterClockwise
  • 3 = 90Clockwise and Vertical Flip
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" output.mp4