FFMpeg

Free, open source software for transcoding

✅ Zero dependency hell. Drop it in a folder, add to PATH, done. No DLLs to lose, no version mismatches.
✅ Portable. You can throw the folder on a USB stick or copy it to a render node machine and it just works.
✅ No conflicts. Windows has this habit of having three different avcodec-63.dlls scattered around from various apps, and whichever one your binary finds first wins. Static builds are immune to that lottery.
❌ Bigger download (~150–190MB vs ~50–80MB). Disk space in 2026 — you'll survive.
❌ No lib-sharing between ffmpeg/ffprobe — each binary carries the full library set.

Shared build

Libraries live in separate DLLs next to the binaries.

✅ Smaller total footprint, and slightly less RAM if you run ffmpeg/ffprobe/ffplay concurrently on the same input.
✅ Relevant mainly for developers — if you're writing code against the FFmpeg libraries and want to update or replace just avcodec.dll without rebuilding.
❌ Any one DLL goes missing/mismatched and ffmpeg refuses to launch.
❌ Copy to another machine without the DLLs? Dead in the water.

Versioning

Build version via -version parameter give different output for different type of release

What you see	What it actually is
`6.1.1`	Tagged release, built from the release tarball (stable release)
`6.1.1-3ubuntu1`	Tagged release + distro patch suffix (still stable)
`7:5.1.7-0+deb12u1`	Debian packaging, complete with epoch prefix
`N-127617-g94cba3150c-20261017`	Untagged master build. N = NEW. Then Number of commits since the last official release tag. Trailing date digits are the builder's stamp of a date
`7.0.1-5-gabc1234`	Built AFTER a tag on a release branch, not at it. Short git hash identifying the exact commit.

Finding the release number for the untagged build is more difficult. You can match "g94cba3150c" against the master commits

Filters

filters in a chain are separated by commas ","
chains by a semicolon ";"
if an input or output is not specified it is assumed to come from the preceding or sent to the following item in the chain.

"filter1=setting1=value1:setting2=value2,filter2=setting1=value1:setting2=value2"

Scale

The FFmpeg rescaler provides a high-level interface to the libswscale library image conversion utilities. In particular it allows one to perform image rescaling and pixel format conversion.
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Scaling https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-scaler.html

iw is input width
-1 and -2 to preserve ratio

ffmpeg -i input -vf "scale=iw/2:-1" output

Libx264

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264

To list all possible internal presets and tunes:

"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -f lavfi -i nullsrc "-c:v libx264" -preset help -f mp4 -y NUL

chaneru x264 doc

Rate control

There are two rate control modes that are usually suggested for general use:

CRF

The range of the CRF scale is 0–51, where 0 is lossless (for 8 bit only, for 10 bit use -qp 0), 23 is the default, and 51 is worst quality possible. A lower value generally leads to higher quality, and a subjectively sane range is 17–28. Consider 17 or 18 to be visually lossless or nearly so; it should look the same or nearly the same as the input but it isn't technically lossless.

The range is exponential, so increasing the CRF value +6 results in roughly half the bitrate / file size, while -6 leads to roughly twice the bitrate.

Will two-pass provide a better quality than CRF?
No, though it does allow you to target a file size more accurately.

Two-pass ABR

For two-pass, you need to run ffmpeg twice, with almost the same settings, except for:

In pass 1 and 2, use the -pass 1 and -pass 2 options, respectively.
In pass 1, output to a null file descriptor, not an actual file. (This will generate a logfile that ffmpeg needs for the second pass.)
In pass 1, you may leave audio out by specifying -an

When using option -an, you may eventually get a segfault or a broken file. If so, remove option -an and replace by -vsync cfr to the first pass.

Presets

To see a list of current presets with -preset help
If you target a certain file size or constant bit rate, you will achieve better quality with a slower preset. Similarly, for constant quality encoding, you will simply save bitrate by choosing a slower preset.

Libx265

H.265/HEVC

x265 docs

NvEnc

Source
Using_FFmpeg_with_NVIDIA_GPU_Hardware_Acceleration.pdf
FFmpeg wiki

REM h264_nvenc help
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=h264_nvenc

Sequence to video

Many high-end video pipelines work with DPX, EXR or TIFF sequences. To transform these sequences into video files, the easiest way is to specify the first file in the sequence as the input and then use -framerate to set the input frame rate and -r to set the output frame rate:

ffmpeg -i input_0001.dpx -framerate 59.94 -c:v libx264 -b:v 30M -r 29.97 -an output.mp4

Palettegen

and Paletteuse, dithering options

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#palettegen-1

https://engineering.giphy.com/how-to-make-gifs-with-ffmpeg

research the paleteuse new option, that uses new palette for each frame!!!
High quality GIF with FFmpeg

Getting info and help

For filters, codecs, muxers, etc

Encoders

video

rem Get encoder help
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=exr

rem Get encoder help
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=tiff

rem Get encoder help
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=aac

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=h264_nvenc

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=hevc_nvenc

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=libvpx-vp9

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=mjpeg

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=png

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=libx264

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=libx265

audio

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=aac

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=ac3

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=pcm_s16le

Pixel formats

rem Get all pixel formats
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -pix_fmts

rem Get pixel formats for encoder
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h encoder=libx264 | findstr "pixel"

Muxers

rem Get pixel muxer's private options
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h muxer=apng

rem Get pixel muxer's private options
"%ffdev%\ffmpeg" -hide_banner -h muxer=mjpeg

Colorspace conversion

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/colorspace

FFprobe

Count keyframes

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\thecolour05.mov"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -hide_banner -of compact=p=0:nk=1 -select_streams "v:0" -count_frames -show_entries stream=nb_read_frames -skip_frame nokey -v 0 -i "%file%"

Show streams

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\Blossom1.%%04d.puzzleMatte.exr"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\thecolour05.mov"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\Senses_preview.mp4"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\tic201_%%04d.tif"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\Senses_preview.webm"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

set "file=F:\Keerah\Projects2\2012\Karaban - Goodavto\passat_updated.mp4"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_streams -show_format -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

Formatting output

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\thecolour05.mov"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_entries "format=format_name" -of "default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1" -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

rem also:
-of flat
-of compact=p=0
-of json
-of xml

Get particular stream data

set "file=D:\Keerah\Projects1\stf tests\thecolour05.mov"
"%ffdev%\ffprobe.exe" -v error -hide_banner -show_entries "stream=width,height,duration,codec_name,pix_fmt,color_space,color_primaries,color_transfer,color_range,avg_frame_rate" -select_streams "v:0" -sexagesimal -i "%file%"

Progress

Stats

Simple version using stats parameters

ffmpeg -v warning -hide_banner -stats ${your_params}

Write to file

FFmpeg in a separate process

-progress %TEMP%\progr.txt

https://blog.programster.org/ffmpeg-output-progress-to-file

Port watcher