Spells for the tty: FFmpeg
Table of contents
As the inaugural post in this Spells for the tty series, I chose to write about FFmpeg. Remembering the correct syntax on the command line for FFmpeg has always seemed like an impossible feat to me. I am quite thankful for the existence of resources such as the H.264 and H.265 guides. While the guide on AV1 has always seemed a bit clunky, this is likely due to the rapid development that AV1 has still been undergoing.
So what exactly is Spells for the tty supposed to be?
To put it simply: a cheatsheet for me to reference when I need to use these commands in real life myself. However, I sincerely doubt I am the only person using these, so to others reading this, perhaps it can be a quick overview of well known commands as well as some of the lesser known options or odities that one can run into while using these commands.
But syntax is often variable depending on the system?
True, so let me clarify that these short articles will mostly be focussed
around the Bash shell on a Debian linux system. To clarify this, I will try to
append $> to all commands. If I end up writing about other shells I'll make
sure to clarify it in the text.1
... so onto FFmpeg now:
How can I make a certain channel the default of it's type?
$> ... -disposition:v:1 forced # :v/a/s: for different channel types
How can I get rid of chapter metadata?
$> ... -map_chapters -1
How can I add a cover image?
$> ... -i <cover.jpg> ... -c:v:1 mjpeg -disposition:v:1 attached_pic
Note: In my entirely personal opinion dealing with some of the
peculiarities of mp4 files can be dangerous. If you are planning to include a
lot of different types of metadata into your media files, I would strongly
suggest taking a look at the mkv/Matroska video-file format. It has also has
great command line support via MKVToolNix.
Footnotes
If you came all the way to this footnote to make fun of me still using bash as my default shell, then I humbly suggest to you to go get a life. Whether it is the best or not, it is realiable in the sense that is available almost everywhere, often times even windows via
git bash.↩