Below are some of the common shortcuts and recipes that I used to manipulate video , to cut, trim, optimize and transcode video when needed. I typicall yfind myself combining multiple clips and other times extracting sepcific segments. Of course I can always open up the clips in [Adobe Premiere] ( https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere-elements.html ) or [DaVinci Resolve ] (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve ) but sometimes its just easier, especially for long or complicated workflows , its easier to use the command line.
A recent copy of [FFMPEG ] (https://ffmpeg.org/ ) video codec utilities.
- Download and install FFMPEG for Linux , Windows or Max https://ffmpeg.org/download.html
- More good examples here: https://www.ostechnix.com/20-ffmpeg-commands-beginners/
In Linux : Loops through all the .mp4 files and runs them through the command line ffmpef to convert to H265 and downscale to 1280
for %%a in (*.mp4) DO ffmpeg -i "%%a" scale=1280:-1 -c:v libx265 -crf 23 -c:a copy "resized\%%~na_resized.mp4"
In Windows : Loops through all the .mp4 files and runs them through the command line ffmpef to convert to H265 and downscale to 1280
dir -exclude *.mp3 | foreach-object { $newname = "resized/"+$_.Basename + "-resized.mp4"; ffmpeg -i "$_" -c:v libx265 -crf 23 -c:a copy $newname }
another windows example resize to 1280x720
dir *.* | foreach-object { $newname = $_.Name.Remove($_.Name.Length - $_.Extension.Length) + ".mp4"; .\ffmpeg.exe -i "$_" -s 1280x720 $newname }
This takes the sample2.mp4 file, and outputs sample-trimmed.mp4 which is just the video between 2 seconds and 67
ffmpeg -i sample2.mp4 -vf trim=2:67 -an sample2-trimmed.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf pad=800:600:160:60:black -an output.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn output.mp3
Withouth re-encoding it
ffmpeg -i movie.mov -vcodec copy -acodec copy out.mp4
with encoding highest quality
ffmpeg -i input.mov -q:v 0 output.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v scale=1280:720 -c:a copy output.mp4
Optimize video file to a specific scale (1280, 960) etc. Please note that you will lose the quality if you try to reduce the video file size. You can lower that crf value to 23 or lower if 24 is too aggressive.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1280:-1 -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -crf 24 output.mp4
-ab indicated the bit rate to re-encode at: 96,112,128,160,192...320kpbs
ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -ab 128 output.mp3
Extract video frames into seperate iamge files.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 1 -f image2 image-%2d.png
Let us say you want to a video with a width of 640 pixels and a height of 480 pixels,
from the position (200,150), the command would be:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=640:480:200:150" output.mp4
general foramt is
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "crop=w:h:x:y" output.mp4
for %%a in ("*.*") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 -c:a libvo_aacenc -b:a 128k "%%~na.mp4"
pause
for %%a in ("*.avi") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 -c:a aac -b:a 128k "newfiles\%%~na.mp4"
pause
for %%a in ("*.mkv") do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "newfiles\%%~na.mp4"
pause
ffmpeg -i 1.MOV -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict -2 1.mp4
ffmpeg -i 2.MOV -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict -2 2.mp4
ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb 1.ts
ffmpeg -i 2.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb 2.ts
ffmpeg -i concat:"1.ts|2.ts" -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc final_video.mp4
ffmpeg -i TriRock-Olympic_A.MOV -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb temp0.ts
ffmpeg -i TriRock-Olympic_B.MOV -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb temp1.ts
ffmpeg -i "concat:temp0.ts|temp1.ts" -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc merged_video.mp4ffmpeg -ss [00:00:0.000] -i in.mp4 -t [duration] -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mp4ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:55.000 -t 01:19:25.000 video_out.mp4
ffmpeg -i 2015_SunsetClassic.mp4 -s 1280x720 2015_SunsetClassic720p.mp4
ffmpeg -i source_video.mp4 .mp4 -ss 00:00:00 -t 01:20:15 -c:v copy -c:a copy output_video.mp4ffmpeg -i source_video.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22 out.mp4
ffmpeg -i TriPhilBike120.mp4 -sws_flags lanczos+accurate_rnd -vf "scale=320:240" -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset fast -profile:v main -tune fastdecode -c:a copy TriPhilBike960.mp4ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -filter:v scale=960:-1 -c:a copy out.mp4ffmpeg -i 1.MOV -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict -2 1.mp4 ffmpeg -i 2.MOV -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict -2 2.mp4 ffmpeg -i 1.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb 1.ts ffmpeg -i 2.mp4 -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb 2.ts ffmpeg -i concat:"1.ts|2.ts" -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc 2015nyctri_bike.mp4
ffmpeg -i TriRock-Olympic_A.MOV -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb temp0.ts ffmpeg -i TriRock-Olympic_B.MOV -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb temp1.ts ffmpeg -i "concat:temp0.ts|temp1.ts" -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc merged_video.mp4 ##trim video from to ffmpeg -ss [00:00:0.000] -i in.mp4 -t [duration] -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mp4 #trim video sections cut without re-encoding ffmpeg -i 2015nyctri_bike.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -ss 00:00:55.000 -t 01:19:25.000 2015nyctri_out.mp4
ffmpeg -i 2015_SunsetClassic.mp4 -s 1280x720 2015_SunsetClassic720p.mp4
ffmpeg -i source_video.mp4 .mp4 -ss 00:00:00 -t 01:20:15 -c:v copy -c:a copy output_video.mp4
ffmpeg -i source_video.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22 out.mp4 ffmpeg -i TriPhilBike120.mp4 -sws_flags lanczos+accurate_rnd -vf "scale=320:240" -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -preset fast -profile:v main -tune fastdecode -c:a copy TriPhilBike960.mp4
ffmpeg -i TriPhilBike120.mp4 -filter:v scale=960:-1 -c:a copy TriPhilBike960.mp4