Introduction to the FFmpeg command-line utilities

FFmpeg is a multimedia framework that has utilities for transcoding, transmuxing, and filtering audio and video. It provides the ffmpeg, ffprobe, and ffplay command-line utilities. It also features the libav* libraries, which allow you to use the functionality of FFmpeg without the programs.¹

Obtaining FFmpeg

Unix-like

Package manager

The easiest way to obtain FFmpeg is through your package manager. On most package managers, the package is simply named ffmpeg, however, ffprobe and ffplay may have their own packages. Note that the packages may be outdated.

Compiling from source

To compile FFmpeg from source:

• grab the sources.
• Run ./configure --help to see a list of features and libraries you can choose to build with.
• Install all libraries you want to build FFmpeg with
• Run ./configure with all --enable- flags you want.
• Run make.
• Run make install.

Binary packages

These packages are not compiled by FFmpeg themselves. Be careful.

• John van Sickle

Windows

Binary Packages

These packages are not compiled by FFmpeg themselves. Be careful.

• gyan.dev

Using the ffmpeg program

ffmpeg is the primary command-line tool of FFmpeg. It takes 0 or more bitstreams as inputs and outputs.

Concepts

Bitstream

A bitstream or bit stream is a media file, the kind that is played in a media player. It consists of a container wrapping multiple elementary streams

Container

A container is a format for putting one or more elementary streams intro one file, or bitstream.

Elementary stream

An elementary stream is an audio, video, or subtitle track. Basically, it's the compressed data you want to mux into the container.

Muxing

Putting elementary streams into a container.

Codec

A codec (coder/decoder) is the piece of code that actually encodes the data you put in. It takes as input and produces as output an elementary stream.

Filter

A filter is a piece of code you can apply to the data to make something about it different, for instance sharpening, removing artifacts, shakiness, denoising, scaling, overlay, etc.

Muxer/Demuxer

The pieces of code that mux or do the reverse, getting elementary streams from the container.

Bitstream filter

A bitstream filter is a filter that is directly applied to the bitstream in order to change something about the container, for instance, convert frame types, or corrupt some packets.

Command-line arguments

ffmpegs command-line arguments are positional. That means, it matters where you put options. Each input and output has their own arguments. So, for example ffmpeg -r 24 -i file1 file2 applies the -r 24 option to the input file1, interpreting the video as having that frame rate, while ffmpeg -i file1 -r 24 file2 applies the -r 24 option to file2. To get a list of options, refer to the FFmpeg documentation.

How do I...

Transcode a video

ffmpeg -i input -c:v video_codec -b:v video_bitrate -c:a audio_codec -b:a audio_bitrate output

Transmux a video

ffmpeg -i input -c copy output

Filter a video

ffmpeg -i input -c:v video_codec -c:a audio_codec (...) -vf filter_name output

References