My Super Helpful FFMPEG Cheatsheet
How to Add subtitles in FFMPEG
You can hardcode subtitles by providing a subtitles files and running the following command
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf subtitles=subs.srt out.mp4
How to Split a video in FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 0 -t 300 -c copy out.mp4
Here 0 is start time in seconds and 300 is end time. This command extracts first 5 minutes of video. You can replace it with any time you need.
How to Show two videos side by side in FFMPEG
If you want to display two videos side by side like mostly done on news channels, it can be done like this
ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex hstack output.mp4
How to rotate a video by any degress using Ffmpeg
Following command can be used to rotate videos
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=360 out.mp4
Here you can replace 360with any values e.g 180
How to Reverse a video in FFMPEG
To only reverse video
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 'reverse' out.mp4
To reverse audio and video
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 'reverse' -af 'areverse' out.mp4
How to Mute video in FFMPEG
You can remove audio from video with this command
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -an out.mp4
How to Make a video greyscale in FFMPEG
You can make an entire video or a part of it greyscale.
Make full video greyscale
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "hue=s=0" out.mp4
Make part of video greyscale
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "hue=s=0:enable=\'between(t,3,5)\" out.mp4
How to increase video speed using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i input -filter:v "setpts=0.5*PTS" output
You can adjust speed by changing 0.5
How to Increase or decrease audio in FFMPEG
Reduce volume by half
ffmpeg -i input.wav -filter:a "volume=0.5" output.wav
Increase volume to 150%
ffmpeg -i input.wav -filter:a "volume=1.5" output.wav
You can also replace 0.5 with dB
How to Generate thumbnails from video in FFMPEG
If you are running a video sharing website or a similar service, you might want to extract thumbnails from video. This is helpful to show what video represents. You can run following command for this.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:00:10 -vframes 12 thumb.png
How to Flip a video horizontally or vertically in FFMPEG
Horizontally
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 'hflip' out.mp4
Vertically
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 'vflip' out.mp4
How to Extract video waveform in FFMPEG
Following command can be used to extract video waveform
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "compand,showwavespic=s=640x120" -frames:v 1 out.png
How to Extract video waveform in FFMPEG
Following command can be used to extract video waveform
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter_complex "compand,showwavespic=s=640x120" -frames:v 1 out.png
How to Extract audio of a video in FFMPEG
If you need to extract audio of a video with re-encoding the whole thing then you can run following command
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vn -acodec copy out.mp3
How to Add watermark in any position in FFMPEG
The base command for adding watermark looks like this
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i watermark.png -filter_complex "POSITION_HERE" out.mp4
You can replace POSITION_HERE with any position you need from the following
Top Right
overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:10
Top Left
overlay=10:10
Bottom Right
overlay=main_w-overlay_w-10:main_h-overlay_h-10
Bottom Left
overlay=10:main_h-overlay_h-10
Center
overlay=x=(main_w-overlay_w)/2:y=(main_h-overlay_h)/2