You can also run ffmpeg with no arguments and get decent results: Turns out, you can also compress using the libx264 argument. The number after -crf can range from 18 to 24, so there’s room for experimentation there.įor my purposes, I uploaded a compressed video through the WordPress admin, but the video on the front end wasn’t loading. This command sets the constant rate factor and also lowers the overall bitrate. Here’s what I use:įfmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 20 output.mp4 All you need to do is cd into the directory that contains the video, then run the command you need to compress. Here’s the fun part: seeing the real magic of ffmpeg. You can likely do this with any other unplayable media type, just modify the arguments. There’s also a shorthand code: ffmpeg -i input.m4v -c copy output.mp4. This takes input.mv4(the file you want to convert) and turns it into output.mp4(the name of the new returned file). From there, it should be easy to compress.įfmpeg -i input.m4v -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mp4 I’ll show an example to convert a mv4 file into mp4. Luckily, converting this with ffmpeg is a breeze. Sometimes, video formats can be “locked” to something like mv4, which makes it hard to do anything with the data. Making sure you have the right formatįirst things first, to compress a video file, it needs to be in a common format such as mp4. If you’re on another distro besides Ubuntu/Debian, just type in the equivalent for your package manager. Otherwise, it should be as simple as running sudo apt install ffmpeg. If you’re on a modern Linux distro, it’s most likely already on your system. Once you learn how to use it, it really starts to come in handy. Want to compress a file as much as possible? ffmpeg for sure. Want to convert a video file between two formats? ffmpeg. In short: ffmpeg is a library that will take care of all your multimedia needs. In this article, I hope to shine light on an alternative that comes with many Linux systems out of the box, is free, and quick to use and learn. Have to send your data to a server you know nothing about.Have to wait longer due to the server processing barrier.There are several ways to approach this, some including online solutions that require you to upload a file to their server, have it processed, then sent back. Often times it’s for front-end performance reasons, but can also come in handy if a server has an upload limit(50MB on a typical WordPress site for example). Every here and there, you may come across a use case where it’s necessary to reduce a video file by 50-80% without any noticeable loss of quality.

Custom ffmpeg command xtream ui