4/15/2020 FFmpeg Encoding and Editing Course

FFMPEG ENCODING AND

EDITING COURSE
Werner Robitza
June 04, 2018

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ABOUT ME
Video quality and Quality of Experience researcher
PhD student and research assistant at Technische
Universität Ilmenau

Contact:

werner.robitza@gmail.com
http://slhck.info
@slhck

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GOALS
This course should cover:

Basic concepts
Installing ffmpeg and tools
Encoding videos
Appling filters
Analyzing videos

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REQUIREMENTS
These slides
ffmpeg, ffprobe and ffplay installed (it will be
explained)
Some sample videos, example: Big Buck Bunny

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RESOURCES
If you need sample videos for testing, see overview
from VQEG
(Video Quality Experts Group):

https://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/vqeg/video-datasets-and-
organizations.aspx

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INTRODUCTION TO FFMPEG

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ABOUT THE PROJECT

Free, open-source software for multimedia editing,

conversion, …
Started in 2000
Continuous development until now

Similar or related (and useful) frameworks:

ImageMagick
MLT Framework

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TOOLS
FFmpeg contains:

Command-line tools: ffmpeg, ffprobe, ffplay

Libraries: libavformat, libavcodec,
libavfilter, …

Libraries are used in many projects (VLC, MLT

Framework, …) and can be used from C/C++ code.

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(libav*))
ABOUT THE LIBRARIES (libav*
libavformat: Reads and writes container formats
(AVI, MKV, MP4, …)
libavcodec: Reads and writes codecs (H.264,
H.265, VP9, …)
libavfilter: Various filters for video and audio
... and many more

Examples on how to programmatically use libraries:

http://leixiaohua1020.github.io/#ffmpeg-
development-examples

Further (partly non-FFmpeg) libraries that you may find

useful:

OpenCV: more signal processing oriented

Python: MoviePy, pyav, scikit-video

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ARCHITECTURE
Simplfied overall architecture:

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INSTALLATION / COMPILATION
Installation Pro Con
Method
Building from Offers all Takes time, harder
source options, to update
tools,
codecs
Downloading Easy and Does not offer all
static build fast encoders, manual
update necessary
Installing from Easy and Does not always
package manager fast offer latest version
(e.g., apt-get) or all encoders
Get source code and static builds from:
http://ffmpeg.org/download.html
Building on Windows: https://github.com/jb-
alvarado/media-autobuild_suite

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GETTING HELP
Places to get help:

📖 Documentation: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-
📖 Wiki: http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki
all.html

📖 IRC: #ffmpeg
✉ Mailing list:
https://lists.ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-
user/
🌐 Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/ and
use #ffmpeg
🌐 Super User: http://superuser.com/ and use
#ffmpeg
… or ask me

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GENERAL VIDEO ENCODING

CONCEPTS

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CONTAINER FORMATS
Containers contain media data. Typical examples:

MP4: MPEG-4 Part 14 container for H.264, H.264,

AAC audio, …
MKV: Versatile container for any media format
WebM: Subset of MKV, usage in Web streaming
AVI: Legacy container

See supported containers with:

$ ffmpeg -formats
File formats:
D. = Demuxing supported
.E = Muxing supported
--
D 3dostr 3DO STR
E 3g2 3GP2 (3GPP2 file format)
E 3gp 3GP (3GPP file format)
D 4xm 4X Technologies
E a64 a64 - video for Commodore 64
D aa Audible AA format files
...

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CODECS
CODEC = Coder / Decoder
Specification on how to code and decode video,
audio, …
Usually not a specification on how to encode /
compress data
Sometimes “codec” == actual encoding/decoding
software

See supported codecs with:

$ ffmpeg -codecs
Codecs:
D..... = Decoding supported
.E.... = Encoding supported
..V... = Video codec
..A... = Audio codec
..S... = Subtitle codec
...I.. = Intra frame-only codec
....L. = Lossy compression
.....S = Lossless compression
-------
D.VI.. 012v Uncompressed 4:2:2
D.V.L. 4xm 4X Movie
D.VI.S 8bps QuickTime 8BPS vid
.EVIL. a64_multi Multicolor charset
.EVIL. a64_multi5 Multicolor charset
D.V..S aasc Autodesk RLE
D.VIL. aic Apple Intermediate

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MOST IMPORTANT (LOSSY) CODECS

Currently mostly used, standardized by ITU/ISO:

🎥 H.262 / MPEG-2 Part H: Broadcasting, TV, used

🎥 H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10: The de-facto standard
for backwards compatibility

🎥 H.265 / HEVC / MPEG-H: Successor of H.264,

for video encoding today

up to 50% better quality

🔊 MP3 / MPEG-2 Audio Layer III: Used to be the
de-facto audio coding standard
🔊 AAC / ISO/IEC 14496-3:2009: Advanced Audio
Coding standard

Competitors that are royalty-free:

🎥 VP8: Free, open-source codec from Google (not

🎥 VP9: Successor to VP8, almost as good as H.265
so much in use anymore)

🎥 AV1: A successor to VP9, claims to be better than

H.265

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MOST IMPORTANT LOSSLESS

CODECS
Lossless codecs are useful for archival, editing, ...

Lossless = no compression artifacts at lower file size

🎥 Raw YUV, HuffYUV, FFV1, ffvhuff …

🔊 Raw PCM, FLAC, ALAC, …

Also, "visually lossless" codecs exist:

🎥 Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHD, JPEG2000, high-

quality H.264/H.265, ...
High bitrate and usually only I-frames

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ENCODERS
Encoders are the actual software that outputs a codec-
compliant bitstream
Encoders can vary in quality and performance, some
are better than others (and some are free, some are
not)

Examples:

🎥 libx264: most popular free and open-source H.264

🎥 NVENC: NVIDIA GPU-based H.264 encoder
encoder

🎥 libx265: free and open-source HEVC encoder

🎥 libvpx: VP8 and VP9 encoder from Google
🎥 libaom: AV1 encoder
🔊 libfdk-aac: AAC encoder
🔊 aac: native FFmpeg AAC encoder
…

→ lots of competition

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ENCODERS SUPPORTED IN FFMPEG

$ ffmpeg -encoders
Encoders:
V..... = Video
A..... = Audio
S..... = Subtitle
.F.... = Frame-level multithreading
..S... = Slice-level multithreading
...X.. = Codec is experimental
....B. = Supports draw_horiz_band
.....D = Supports direct rendering method 1
------
V..... a64multi Multicolor charset f
V..... a64multi5 Multicolor charset f
V..... alias_pix Alias/Wavefront PIX
...

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PIXEL FORMATS
Representation of raw pixels in video streams
Specifies order of luma/color components and
chroma subsampling

Image Source: Wikipedia

Supported pixel formats: ffmpeg -pix_fmts

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ENCODING WITH THE ffmpeg

COMMAND LINE TOOL

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GENERAL SYNTAX

ffmpeg <global-options> <input-options> -i <input

Global options for log output, file overwriting, ...

Input options for reading files
Output options for:
conversion (codec, quality, ...)
filtering
stream mapping
…

Full help: ffmpeg -h full or man ffmpeg – but it's

huge!

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TRANSCODING AND TRANSMUXING

Transcoding from one codec to another (e.g. H.264
using libx264):

ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 output.mp4

Transmuxing from one container/format to another –

without re-encoding:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mkv

ffmpeg will take one video, audio, and subtitle stream

from the input and map it to the output.

Explanation:

-c sets the encoder (see ffmpeg -encoders)

-c copy only copies bitstream
-c:v sets only video encoders
-c:a sets only audio encoders
-an and -vn would disable audio or video streams

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TRANSCODING BACKGROUND
From http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html:

ffmpeg […] read[s] input files and get

packets containing encoded data from
them. When there are multiple input
files, ffmpeg tries to keep them
synchronized […].

Encoded packets are then passed to the

decoder. […] The decoder produces
uncompressed frames […] which can
be processed further by filtering […].
After filtering, the frames are passed to
the encoder, which encodes them and
outputs encoded packets. Finally those
are passed to the muxer, which writes
the encoded packets to the output file.

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SEEKING AND CUTTING

Cut a video from timestamp <start> for <duration>,
or until <end>:

ffmpeg -ss <start> -i <input> -t <duration> -c co

ffmpeg -ss <start> -i <input> -to <end> -c copy <

Examples:

ffmpeg -ss 00:01:50 -i <input> -t 10.5 -c copy <o

ffmpeg -ss 2.5 -i <input> -to 10 -c copy <output>

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NOTES ABOUT SEEKING

When re-encoding video, seeking is always accurate
to the timestamp
When copying bitstreams (-c copy), ffmpeg may
copy frames that are not shown but necessary to
include
Cutting with -c copy may yield video that starts
with black frames (on unsupported players)
Also see:
http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking
https://superuser.com/questions/138331/using-
ffmpeg-to-cut-up-video

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SETTING QUALITY
The output quality depends on encoder defaults and
the source material
Do not just encode without setting any quality level!
Generally: You need to choose a target bitrate or
quality level
Target bitrate depends on the video genre, size and
framerate

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OPTIONS FOR SETTING QUALITY

Possible options (just examples):

-b:v or -b:a to set bitrate

e.g., -b:v 1000K = 1000 kbit/s, -b:v 8M = 8
Mbit/s
-q:v or -q:a to set fixed-quality parameter
e.g., -q:a 2 for native AAC encoder

Examples of encoder-specific options:

-crf to set Constant Rate Factor for

libx264/libx265
-vbr to set constant quality for FDK-AAC encoder
Many many more; see e.g. ffmpeg -h
encoder=libx264 for examples

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WHAT IS CRF?
CRF = Constant Rate Factor
Maintain constant quality across the entire encode
Good for storing video at fixed quality if file size is
not important

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EXAMPLE: TRANSCODING TO H.264,

PT. 1
Constant quality (CRF) encoding:

ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -c:a aac

For H.264, CRF between 18 and 28 looks "good", lower

is better. (Different CRF for HEVC and VP9.)

EXAMPLE: TRANSCODING TO H.264,

PT. 2
Two-pass encoding:

ffmpeg -y -i <input> -c:v libx264 -b:v 8M -pass 1

ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 -b:v 8M -pass 2 -c

(Windows: Use NUL instead of /dev/null)

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

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RATE CONTROL
Different kinds of rate control:

Constant Bitrate (CBR)

Variable Bitrate (VBR)
Average bitrate (ABR)
Constant quantization parameter (CQP)
Constant quality, based on psychovisual
properties, e.g. CRF in x264/x265/libvpx-vp9
Constrained bitrate (VBV)

Which rate control to use for which case? More info:

https://slhck.info/video/2017/03/01/rate-control.html

Important: Rate depends on content characteristics!

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RATE CONTROL EXAMPLES

Frame sizes over time (smoothed) for different rate

control modes
Observe wrong estimation of bitrate at the beginning
for ABR

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SPEED VS. QUALITY VS. FILE SIZE

(Lossy) encoding is always a trade-off between:

For example:

You can have fast, high-quality encoding, but the file

will be large
You can have high-quality, smaller file size, but the
encoding will take longer
You can have small files with fast encoding, but the
quality will be bad

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SPEED/QUALITY PRESETS IN X264

Choose the encoding speed for libx264 with the preset
option:

ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset ul

ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset me
ffmpeg -i <input> -c:v libx264 -crf 23 -preset ve

All presets: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast,

faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow

Example results (all have the same quality!):

Preset Encoding Time File Size

ultrafast 4.85s 15M
medium 24.13s 5.2M
veryslow 112.23s 4.9M

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CHANGING FRAMERATE
Simple way to change the framerate by dropping or
duplicating frames:

ffmpeg -i <input> -r 24 <output>

More complex ways involve filtering, see fps,

mpdecimate, minterpolate filters:

ffmpeg -i <input> -filter:v fps=24 <output>

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STREAM MAPPING
Each file and its streams have a unique ID, starting with
0.

Examples:

0:0 is the first stream of the first input file

0:1 is the second stream of the first input file
2:a:0 is the first audio stream of the third input file
…

You can map input streams to output, e.g. to add audio

to a video:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i input.m4a -c copy -map 0:v

See: http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Map

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SIMPLE FILTERING
ffmpeg has lots of video, audio, subtitle filters:

ffmpeg -i <input> -filter:v "<filter1>,<filter2>

A <filter> has a name and several options, and some

pre-defined variables:

-filter:v <name>=<option1>=<value1>:<option2>=<v

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SCALING
Scale to 320×240:

ffmpeg -i <input> -vf "scale=w=320:h=240" <output

Scale to a height of 240 and keep aspect ratio divisible

by 2:

ffmpeg -i <input> -vf scale=w=-2:h=240 <output>

Scale to 1280×720 or smaller if needed:

ffmpeg -i <input> -vf "scale=1280:720:force_origi

More tips:

http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Scaling%20(resizing)%20
https://superuser.com/questions/547296/

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PADDING
Add black borders to a file, e.g. 1920×800 input to
1920×1080:

ffmpeg -i <input> -vf "pad=1920:1080:(ow-iw)/2:(o

Note that:

You can use mathematical expressions

ow and oh are output width and height
iw and ih are input width and height

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FADING
Simple fade-in and fade-out at a specific time for a
specific duration.

ffmpeg -i <input> -filter:v \

"fade=t=in:st=0:d=5,fade=t=out:st=30:d=5" \
<output>

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DRAWING TEXT
Complex system for printing text on video:

ffmpeg -i <input> -vf \

drawtext="text='Test Text':x=100:y=50:\
fontsize=24:fontcolor=yellow:box=1:boxcolor=red"
<output>

Various options related to font family, size, position,

color, …
Text expansion (burn in frame number or timecode)

See: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#drawtext-1

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COMPLEX FILTERING
Complex filters have more than one in- and/or output:

ffmpeg -i <input1> -i <input2> -filter_complex \

"[0:v:0][1:v:0]overlay[outv]" \
-map "[outv]" <output>

Steps:

Specify inputs to filterchain (e.g. [0:v:0][1:v:0])

Specify filters in the chain (e.g. overlay)
Specify output labels of chain (e.g. [outv])
Map output labels to final output file
You can have multiple filterchains with ;

See: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#Filtergraph-
syntax-1

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CONCATENATING STREAMS
Decode three video/audio streams and append to one
another:

ffmpeg -i <input1> -i <input2> -i <input3> -filte

"[0:0][0:1][1:0][1:1][2:0][2:1]concat=n=3:v=1
-map "[outv]" -map "[outa]" <output>

See: http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate (also for

other methods)

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TIMELINE EDITING
Enable filters only at a specific point in time.

Example:

Show a watermark in the top left corner

Between seconds 1 and 2 only

ffmpeg -i <video> -i <watermark> -filter_complex

"[0:v][1:v]overlay=10:10:enable='between(t,1
-map "[outv]" <output>

See: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#Timeline-
editing

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CALCULATING SIMPLE QUALITY

METRICS
PSNR (Peak Signal To Noise Ratio):

$ ffmpeg -i <degraded> -i <reference> -filter_com

[Parsed_psnr_0 @ 0x7fdb187045c0] PSNR y:33.437789

SSIM (Structural Similarity):

$ ffmpeg -i <degraded> -i <reference> -filter_com

[Parsed_ssim_0 @ 0x7fbf0500b660] SSIM Y:0.925477

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MANY OTHER FILTERS

Examples:

Scene change detection using the select filter

Removing watermarks (delogo)
Blurring, edge detection and convolution filters
Video stabilization
Vectorscopes, histograms and other information
Chroma and alpha keying
Subtitle editing

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GETTING MEDIA INFORMATION

WITH ffprobe

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GENERAL CONCEPTS

ffprobe <input>
[-select_streams <selection>]
[-show_streams|-show_format|-show_frames|-sho
[-show_entries <entries>]
[-of <output-format>]

Explanation:

select_streams for specificing only video or

audio, for example
show_ for selecting which information to show
show_entries for selecting fewer entries to show
of to set output format

See:

https://ffmpeg.org/ffprobe.html
http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/FFprobeTips

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PRACTICAL ffprobe EXAMPLES PT. 1

Show all available streams:

ffprobe <input> -show_streams

Show info on video stream:

ffprobe <input> -select_streams v -show_format

Show presentation timestamp and frame type of every

frame, in CSV format (p=0 disables CSV section
headers)

ffprobe <input> -select_streams v -show_frames \

-show_entries frame=pkt_pts_time,pict_type -of cs

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PRACTICAL ffprobe EXAMPLES PT. 2

Change output to JSON format for parsing:

ffprobe <input> -select_streams v -show_packets

Get the number of streams in a file (nk=1 disables

keys):

ffprobe <input> -show_format -show_entries format

Get the duration in seconds or HH:MM:SS.ms:

ffprobe <input> -show_format -show_entries format

ffprobe -sexagesimal <input> -show_format -show_e

Get bitrate of audio stream in Bit/s:

ffprobe <input> -select_streams a -show_entries s

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INSPECTING VIDEO CODECS

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DEBUGGING MOTION VECTORS

Simple way to visualize motion in FFmpeg with H.264
codecs (does not work for other codecs):

ffplay -flags2 +export_mvs input.mp4 -vf codecvie

ffmpeg -flags2 +export_mvs -i input.mp4 -vf codec

pf – forward predicted motion vectors of P pictures

bf – forward predicted motion vectors of B pictures
bb – backward predicted motion vectors of B pictures

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DEBUGGING MOTION VECTORS

More info:
http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Debug/MacroblocksAndMo

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VIDEO STREAM ANALYZERS

Different software for analyzing bitstreams graphically:

Elecard Stream Analyzer (commercial)

CodecVisa (commercial)
Intel Video Pro Analyzer (commercial)
AOMAnalyzer (free, AV1/VP9 video)

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SUMMARY

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SUMMARY
You should have learned how to:

Understand FFmpeg libraries, codecs, containers,

encoders, …
Encode video and audio
Apply basic filters
Read stream information and metadata
Find help if you get stuck

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