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FFMPEG

FFMPEG is the best, fastest transcode and swiss-army knife for video and audio files. It’s easy to install and use on a Mac (using homebrew). It sucks to install on a PC, but it can run faster - if you have a system that outperforms your Mac. All the cheat sheet things below can be modified for different codecs, and an infinite number of other ways.

Installation

On mac, I recommend installing FFMPEG through Homebrew. Very easy. Google it. 

On windoze, I recommend installing FFMPEG through Scoop. You install Scoop via Powershell (non-admin), and then you run FFMPEG via Command Prompt. FFMPEG in a WSL environment, while easier to install in some cases, does not perform nearly as well without significant tweaking of the FFMPEG commands. Vanilla FFMPEG doesn’t work well in WSL(!)

Updating

If you used homebrew to install FFMPEG, it’s this easy:

brew update && brew upgrade ffmpeg

Cheat Sheet

Directory

You can easily CD your target directory so you don’t have those big old file strings. 

Get Frame Count / Duration

(source)

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -count_packets \
    -show_entries stream=nb_read_packets -of csv=p=0 input.mp4

FFProbe - Audit Files and Create Log

Replace path with your directory path (both times). This audits for broken quicktime files and skips any that are encoded with NotchLC.

find /path -type f -name "*.mov" -exec sh -c 'dir="/path/"; ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$1" | grep -q "NotchLC" && exit 0 || (ffprobe -v error -show_error -count_frames -select_streams v:0 -read_intervals "%+#1" -skip_frame nokey -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep -v "Referenced QT chapter track not found" && echo "$1" >> "$dir/incomplete_files.txt")' sh {} \;

CRF Low Bitrate MP4

“-crf 24” is bitrate / quality

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -crf 24 output.mp4

PNG+Alpha to WebM+ Alpha

ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i YourFile-%04d.png -c:v libvpx-vp9 -pix_fmt yuva420p -crf 24 YourOutPutFileNameHere.webm

%04d = number of #s in the image sequence file name

CONCAT to HAP

If Start Number is required

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 00126 -i /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Render-PNG/Grid-Render_%05d.png -c:v hap /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Render-PNG/Grid-Render_test.mov

If Start Number is not required

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Render-PNG/Grid-Render_%05d.png -c:v hap /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Render-PNG/Grid-Render_test.mov

HAP Alpha

Tiff+alpha to HAP+A

ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Overlay/Grid-Overlay_%05d.tif -c:v hap -format hap_alpha -chunks 6 /Users/can/Desktop/SCRATCH/_somefolder/INTER/SQNCS/Grid-Overlay/Grid-Overlay.mov

Transcode 422 to HAP

ffmpeg -i /Users/can/Desktop/7x4k-1800frms-APR422.mov -c:v hap -chunks 6 /Users/can/Desktop/7x4k-1800frms-HAP.mov

HEVC Straight Transcode

ffmpeg -i /Users/can/Desktop/220902_somename_hapq_60fps.mov -c:v hevc /Users/can/Desktop/220902_somename_hevc.mp4

Simple Repackaging + Audio Add

This will take an existing video file and add an audio file to it. 

ffmpeg -i /Volumes/SSD-01/01-Projects/somename/SOME-EXPORT/V3-HAP10.mov -i "/Users/can/Desktop/matchv3.aif" -c:a copy -shortest -y -c:v copy /Volumes/SSD-01/01-Projects/somename/SOME-EXPORT/V4-HAP10-AIF.mov

Repackaging 8-Channel Audio

ffmpeg -i /Volumes/SSD-01/01-Projects/somename/CRTV/V4-422.mov -i "/Volumes/SSD-01/01-Projects/somename/CRTV/V5B.aif" -c:a copy -shortest -y -c:v hap -chunks 10 -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 /Volumes/SSD-01/01-Projects/somename/SOME-EXPORT/VID_V4-AUD_V5B-HAP.mov

Combining Files AKA Getting Hacky

This example sets an in and out of file A and file B. Then it combines them referencing a simple text file that’s just a list of the files. Then it adds audio. All files were already HAP so no transcoding needed to happen. 

FILE-A

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:00.000 -i /Volumes/CT_FAST-02/somename_creative-HAPV7-chunk10.mov -t 00:08:00.000 -c copy /Users/can/Desktop/7A-StartPatch.mov

FILE-B

ffmpeg -ss 00:08:00.000 -i /Users/can/Desktop/somename_DELIVERY_V7B.mov -to 00:09:29.464 -c copy /Users/can/Desktop/7B-EndPatch.mov

COMBO

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i /Users/can/Desktop/farts.txt -c copy /Users/can/Desktop/7ABCOMBO.mov

Contents of fart.txt

file '/Users/can/Desktop/fileA.mov'
file '/Users/can/Desktop/fileBmov'

ADD AUDIO

ffmpeg -i /Users/can/Desktop/7ABCOMBO.mov -i "/Volumes/CT_FAST-02/Citizen_NYC_v10_8chan.wav" -c:a copy -shortest -y -c:v copy -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 /Volumes/CT_FAST-02/somename_DELIVERY_V7B-HAP-6CHUNK.mov

Removing Audio

Remove Audio

ffmpeg -i /vidinput.mov -c:v copy -an /videonoaudio.mov

REMOVE AUDIO BATCH

cd (the directory)

then

for i in `ls *.MOV`; do ffmpeg -i $i -c:v copy -an /Volumes/SSD-01/_AudioRemove/$i; done
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