Video and Audio file format conversion

Any supported file format and protocol can serve as input to ffmpeg:

Examples:

• You can use YUV files as input:

  ffmpeg -i /tmp/test%d.Y /tmp/out.mpg
  

  It will use the files:

  /tmp/test0.Y, /tmp/test0.U, /tmp/test0.V,
  /tmp/test1.Y, /tmp/test1.U, /tmp/test1.V, etc...
  

  The Y files use twice the resolution of the U and V files. They are raw files, without header. They can be generated by all decent video decoders. You must specify the size of the image with the '-s' option if ffmpeg cannot guess it.

• You can input from a raw YUV420P file:

  ffmpeg -i /tmp/test.yuv /tmp/out.avi
  

  test.yuv is a file containing raw YUV planar data. Each frame is composed of the Y plane followed by the U and V planes at half vertical and horizontal resolution.

• You can output to a raw YUV420P file:

  ffmpeg -i mydivx.avi hugefile.yuv
  

• You can set several input files and output files:

  ffmpeg -i /tmp/a.wav -s 640x480 -i /tmp/a.yuv /tmp/a.mpg
  

  Converts the audio file a.wav and the raw YUV video file a.yuv to MPEG file a.mpg.

• You can also do audio and video conversions at the same time:

  ffmpeg -i /tmp/a.wav -ar 22050 /tmp/a.mp2
  

  Converts a.wav to MPEG audio at 22050 Hz sample rate.

• You can encode to several formats at the same time and define a mapping from input stream to output streams:

  ffmpeg -i /tmp/a.wav -map 0:a -b:a 64k /tmp/a.mp2 -map 0:a -b:a 128k /tmp/b.mp2
  

  Converts a.wav to a.mp2 at 64 kbits and to b.mp2 at 128 kbits. '-map file:index' specifies which input stream is used for each output stream, in the order of the definition of output streams.

• You can transcode decrypted VOBs:

  ffmpeg -i snatch_1.vob -f avi -c:v mpeg4 -b:v 800k -g 300 -bf 2 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 128k snatch.avi
  

  This is a typical DVD ripping example; the input is a VOB file, the output an AVI file with MPEG-4 video and MP3 audio. Note that in this command we use B-frames so the MPEG-4 stream is DivX5 compatible, and GOP size is 300 which means one intra frame every 10 seconds for 29.97fps input video. Furthermore, the audio stream is MP3-encoded so you need to enable LAME support by passing --enable-libmp3lame to configure. The mapping is particularly useful for DVD transcoding to get the desired audio language.

  NOTE: To see the supported input formats, use ffmpeg -demuxers.

• You can extract images from a video, or create a video from many images:

  For extracting images from a video:

  ffmpeg -i foo.avi -r 1 -s WxH -f image2 foo-%03d.jpeg
  

  This will extract one video frame per second from the video and will output them in files named 'foo-001.jpeg', 'foo-002.jpeg', etc. Images will be rescaled to fit the new WxH values.

  If you want to extract just a limited number of frames, you can use the above command in combination with the -frames:v or -t option, or in combination with -ss to start extracting from a certain point in time.

  For creating a video from many images:

  ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 12 -i foo-%03d.jpeg -s WxH foo.avi
  

  The syntax foo-%03d.jpeg specifies to use a decimal number composed of three digits padded with zeroes to express the sequence number. It is the same syntax supported by the C printf function, but only formats accepting a normal integer are suitable.

  When importing an image sequence, -i also supports expanding shell-like wildcard patterns (globbing) internally, by selecting the image2-specific -pattern_type glob option.

  For example, for creating a video from filenames matching the glob pattern foo-*.jpeg:

  ffmpeg -f image2 -pattern_type glob -framerate 12 -i 'foo-*.jpeg' -s WxH foo.avi
  

• You can put many streams of the same type in the output:

  ffmpeg -i test1.avi -i test2.avi -map 1:1 -map 1:0 -map 0:1 -map 0:0 -c copy -y test12.nut
  

  The resulting output file 'test12.nut' will contain the first four streams from the input files in reverse order.

• To force CBR video output:

  ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -b 4000k -minrate 4000k -maxrate 4000k -bufsize 1835k out.m2v
  

• The four options lmin, lmax, mblmin and mblmax use 'lambda' units, but you may use the QP2LAMBDA constant to easily convert from 'q' units:

  ffmpeg -i src.ext -lmax 21*QP2LAMBDA dst.ext
  

Syntax

This section documents the syntax and formats employed by the FFmpeg libraries and tools.