What is FFmpeg?
FFmpeg is a very powerful tool for manipulating and encoding media. You can do thousands of different things such as adding/removing streams to media, changing codecs, streaming data, adding/removing subs etc. For a full list of commands visit this page:
https://gist.github.com/tayvano/6e2d456a9897f55025e25035478a3a50
How to install FFmpeg on Linux/Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -version
The final output should give something along the following:
ffmpeg version 4.2.4-1ubuntu0.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 9 (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2)
You can now start using FFmpeg!
How to install FFmpeg on Windows:
To install FFmpeg on Windows visit the following link:
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
Scroll down to the release builds section and you'll see the latest release section.
Download ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip and unzip it. Inside you'll see ffmpeg.exe which in most cases is all you need.
How to install FFmpeg on macOS:
Using homebrew you can simply run the following:
brew install ffmpeg
brew link ffmpeg
ffmpeg -version
Hardware transcoding using GPUs and FFmpeg
Often users want to be able to use their graphics cards for increased decoding/encoding speed when transcoding video, in which case you'll need to make sure your FFmpeg version has the relevant encoders. The most commonly used ones are the following:
# For Nvidia GPUs
nvenc_h264
nvenc_h265
# For AMD GPUs
h264_amf
hevc_amf
# For Intel iGPUs (6000 series onwards)
hevc_vaapi
hevc_qsv
You can check the FFmpeg encoders available by running:
ffmpeg -encoders
Which will produce output such as the following:
V..... libx265 libx265 H.265 / HEVC (codec hevc)
V..... nvenc_hevc NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
V..... hevc_nvenc NVIDIA NVENC hevc encoder (codec hevc)
Get started using Tdarr transcode automation for free with this link: