FFMPEG - From Zero to Hero

Book excerpt: If you ever wondered how the developers of YouTube or Vimeo cope with billions of video uploads or how Netflix processes its catalogue at scale or, again, if you want to discover how to create and develop your own video platform, you may want to know more about FFMPEG. FFMPEG stands for “Fast-Forward-Moving-Picture-Expert Group”. This book contains a basic guide, a basic dictionary and many working formulas along with step-by-step syntax explanations of FFMPEG and a lot of other softwares for audio, video, image and subtitles processing. This book describes and explains also several tools that works along with FFMPEG, such as ImageMagick, Bento4, GhostScript, WebP Tools amongst others. The book contains also a dedicated step-by-step guide for FFMPEG's various installation options for MacOS X, Ubuntu and Windows platforms. Whether you are at the very beginning or an experienced developer, you will find several effective ways to execute many tasks for your audio/video/streaming needings. Contents • Acknowledgments • What is FFMPEG • Basic Definitions • Basic FFMPEG Workflow • How to Install FFMPEG • Basic Syntax Concepts of FFMPEG • Keyframes: Basic Concepts • Metadata and FFPROBE • Extracting Metadata with FFMPEG • Extracting Specific Streams • Extracting Audio Only from a Video • Extracting Video Only without Audio • Cutting Videos with FFMPEG • Producing h264/AVC videos • Different h264 encoding approaches • Producing h265/HEVC Videos • h266 - Versatile Video Codec (VVC) • Producing VP8 Videos • Producing VP9 videos • The OPUS Audio Codec • The FLAC Audio Codec • Producing AV1 Video • Netflix/Intel AV1 SVT-AV1 • AV1AN - All-in-one Tool • Streaming on Social Media with RTMP • Pre-Process Files in Batch • Re-Stream to multiple destinations • Concatenate Video Playlists • Producing HLS with FFMPEG and Bento4 • Producing DASH Streaming • Batch Processing for DASH and HLS Delivery • Batch Processing for HLS Only • Streaming Mp4 Files - The Moov Atom • Producing Adaptive WebM DASH Streaming • Scaling with FFMPEG • Overlay Images on Video • Overlay Images on Pictures • ImageMagick • Batch Process - Overlay to Multiple Images with Same Size • Batch Process - Overlay to Multiple Images with Different Sizes • Batch Resize Images • Batch Resize, Lower Quality and Convert Pictures • Convert Images to WebP • Remove Black Bars/Borders from Images and Trim • Batch Convert Pictures from RAW to JPEG format • Ghostscript for PDF processing • Extract Images from PDF • Generate Waveforms from Audio • Generate Animated Video from Audio • Create Animated Slides from Still Pictures • Extract Images from Video • Extract Audio from Video • Replace Audio of a Video • Batch Convert Audio Files to a specific format • Batch Convert Audio Files in Multiple Formats • Audio Loudness Normalization for TV Broadcast • Audio Loudness Normalization for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant (Audiobooks/Podcasts) • Batch Audio Loudness Normalization for Amazon Alexa (AudioBooks/Podcasts) • De-Interlacing Filter - 13 FFMPEG solutions • How to make a high-quality GIF from a video • How to add an Overlay Banner and burn subtitles onto a video • How to extract VTT files (Web Video Text Track) and burn it onto a video as a subtitle • Automatic Transcriptions and Subtitles • Additional Notes and Syntax Definitions • Bibliography • Recommended Resources • About Me • Alphabetical Index Features • Over 80 chapters • Over 200 tested formulas and syntax explanations • Navigable Index • Tested for MacOS X, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10 platforms FAQ Which audience this book is intended for? This book is designed to address anyone who is just above the “raw beginner” level. This book will explain some basic process such as entering commands and execute simple code instructions using a Command-Line- Interface (CLI) instead of using high resource-intensive Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). You may review some basic definitions and concepts, or skip directly to the working Formulas, as you'll prefer. It is a book intended for both the beginner and the expert developer, but suitable also for creatives, social media managers, webmasters, writers, musicians, photographers, video-makers, audio engineers, archival and restoration technicians, radio/tv broadcasters, streamers, You-Tubers, etc. and anyone who needs to automate and speed-up the manipulation, editing and conversion of many different audio/video/pictures formats. What's the difference between this book and other basic books about FFMPEG? FFMPEG has a pretty steep learning curve and the books currently around lacks on the very basics terms and syntax explanations of the commands. This book contains lots of explanations about the basic BASH terms, which unleash the functionalities and the true power of FFMPEG. Also: this book will cover other great tools for content creation, editing and automation, such as ImageMagick, Bento4, Ghostscript along with scripting automation formulas and examples. Why a book on the basics of FFMPEG? Because FFMPEG can be powerful and can be very easy for anyone, once it's core technology and syntax are understood. If you would like to know more about a ultra-fast way that gives you for free the same results that you achieve with expensive subscription-based softwares for content creation/video editing/image or audio manipulation/conversion, then this is the right book for you.