Where’s that madman that uses ffmpeg instead of cat
It’s very simple.
ffmpeg -i input_file <deep-dark-magic-you-should-be-afraid-of> output_fileCouldn’t be simpler.
I find it wild there are countless “convert videos online for free!” sites on the Internet full of bonus malware which are all just thin wrappers around ffmpeg. And yet they persist because people want googleable answers to their problem which don’t need a command line or downloading anything.
Personally I’ve got a Python script which provides a slightly friendlier wrapper around ffmpeg for my common use-cases.
But honestly ffmpeg is such a beast, so much of what we use daily depends on it under the hood.
More like ffmpreg amirite?
Is that the fork that converts regexes into mp4?
Why learn ffmpeg when you can find the holy words that invokes the machine spirits transmutation codex and write them on your data slate to be used again later?
Why learn when you can do what I do and look it up every single time you want to do something as though you are but a goldfish who learned to type?
Why do you need to learn ffmpeg
Wanting to do anything with video for one
Not true. You can:
- create
- delete
- copy
- move
- spend an afternoon with windows movie maker
- think you are creating but forgot to reinstall the sd card
- upload to youtube without any editing like a boss
So many things you can do without ffmpeg
You really named probably the only video editing software that isn’t using
ffmpegsomewhere.YouTube uses ffmpeg to convert the video, even if you don’t edit the video.
don’t let your dreams be dreams
create that ffm pegging video
Compress video to a broadly compatible format:
ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 25 -preset slow -c:a libfdk_aac -b:a 128k output.mp4This incantation is what I end up needing 99% of the time I do something with ffmpeg.
I’ve been a fan of
libsvtav1lately.I ran a comparison between libsvtav1 and h264 and h265 and found that libsvtav kinda sucks.
It does produce smaller file sizes at h265, but it tends to add a visible blur.
Might be what you’re encoding. So far pretty much everything I’ve done has been visually indistinguishable (to me and my wife). Most of the content I’ve been encoding is anime, however.
I should try it on anime. I was using it on phone videos.
