Trimming a couple of seconds, minutes or hours off the end of a video is easy but again requires a different understanding of time in FFmpeg. Trimming from the end of an MP4 uses the argument -t or duration with no seeking. Tip: The duration must be set before the input else FFmpeg applies the […]
Trimming a few seconds, minutes or hours from a video is simple but requires an understanding of the seeking and duration options. In this example, the input file is 5 minutes long with a 15 second introduction that needs to be removed. It’s important to identify these two numbers because trimming requires tricky subtraction. Let’s […]
Although not a conversion to another format, compression is one of the most asked questions about MP4 files with FFmpeg. People are constantly looking for ways to reduce file size while keeping quality generally the same. This is easily done with -crf or Constant Rate Factor. -crf lowers the average bitrate and retains quality. -crf […]
In the previous video format conversions the formats supported audio without any additional encoding. A Graphic Interchange Format or GIF is a bitmap image format without an audio component. GIFs have been around since the late 80s and are still used to this day on web forums, Discord, text messages and everywhere in between. Because […]
As an open source alternative to HTML5 video (the successor of FLV), WebM is another multimedia container format that is currently being maintained by Google. WebM files are native to android devices but not iOS (or Safari), thus converting to MP4 is beneficial. Luckily, the conversion is simple because most WebM video codecs are H.264: […]
FLV or Flash Video is a multimedia container format maintained by Adobe Systems. It was once the staple of how most media was delivered on the internet in the early 2000s. Although replaced in the modern streaming world, FLV files do exist and converting to MP4 is easy when encoding with libx264: Tip: Instagram and […]
The AVI format is a multimedia container format developed and maintained by Microsoft. AVI has support for multiple video codecs including MPEG-4. This makes the conversion to MP4 simple: If the input.avi codec is not MPEG-4, setting the libx264 codec might be required: Tip: Instagram and Twitter do not support AVI video uploads.
The Matroska Multimedia Container or MKV is a free open container format that differs from formats like MOV or MP4. MKV files can store an unlimited amount of video, audio, pictures or subtitle tracks in one file. This stacking of media has benefits for videos that require audio or subtitles with multiple languages. Because of […]
MOV is a video format developed by Apple but compatible with most software and players. MOV uses the MPEG-4 codec for compression making the conversion between MOV to MP4 very simple, as seen below: Tip: MOV files are usually larger in size but a higher quality video in comparison to MP4.But the MOV format does […]
There are times when the audio on a video needs to be replaced. Here filters are not even needed to replace audio but the use of -map becomes important to understand: Here the video from the first input and the audio from the second input is mapped to the output. Challenge: Using the same concepts in the above […]