FFmpeg
FFmpeg is an open-source command line utility for performing audio/video file conversions. It can be used to simply convert straight from one video format to another, or to crop, pad, rescale, change bit-rates, merge or split out audio and video, and so on…
The projects website is at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/. Here’s a few links to some of the most useful parts of the project’s own documentation:
The simplest command format is ‘ffmpeg -i inputFile outputFile’, but it can be made as complex as required, in order to specify every single parameter of the conversion process.
To obtain the encoding details from an existing audio or video file, just run the command with only an input file specified, e.g.: ffmpeg -i somefile.avi
I’ll now list some commonly used parameters. These may do exactly what you need first time, but don’t be surprised if you have to tweak the parameters slightly for them to work on your system, with your files:
Convert AVI video to MPEG:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi outputFile.mpg
Convert MPEG video to AVI:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.mpg outputFile.avi
Convert FLV to MPEG:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.flv -ab 56k -ar 22050 -b 500k -s 320x240 outputFile.mpg
- Audio bit-rate: 56kbps
- Audio sampling frequency: 22050Hz
- Video bit-rate: 500kbps
- Video size: 320 x 240
Convert MPEG or AVI to FLV:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 -f flv outputFile.flv
- Audio sampling frequency: 22050Hz
Convert AVI to MPEG-2 for DVD
Note that you will probably need to change the ‘target’ and ‘aspect’ to match your needs:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi -target pal-dvd -aspect 16:9 outputFile.mpg
Convert sequence of JPEGs to MPEG:
Note that the image files in this example would named ‘pic-001.jpg, pic-002.jpg, etc…
ffmpeg -f image2 -i pic-%d.jpg outputFile.mpg
Convert MPEG or AVI to sequence of JPEGs:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.mpg pic-%d.jpg
Convert MPEG or AVI to time-lapsed sequence of JPEGs, one per second:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.mpg -r 1 pic-%d.jpg
- Video frame-rate: 1fps
Convert MPEG or AVI to animated GIF:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi outputFile.gif
Convert MP3 to WAV:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.mp3 outputFile.wav
Convert WAV to MP3:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.wav -ab 256k outputFile.mp3
- Audio bit-rate: 256kbps
Remove the audio from MPEG or AVI:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi -an outputFile.avi
Remove video from MPEG or AVI, and convert to MP3:
ffmpeg -i inputFile.avi -an -ab 256k outputFile.mp3
- Audio bit-rate: 256kbps
Add audio and video together, and convert to MPEG:
ffmpeg -i audioFile.wav -i videoFile.avi outputFile.mpg