[0:00] Do you ever battle with finding the right tool 
to create a GIF, compress a huge video file,  
[0:04] or resize an image? How about capturing 
your screen, running a live stream session,  
[0:08] or audio ripping from a video you found? You 
probably had a name attached to each need I  
[0:12] just mentioned. What if I told you the ultimate 
tool for all of these is likely already on your  
[0:17] machine working silently under the hood in the 
apps you use every day. It's called FFmpeg,  
[0:21] and it's the engine that powers everything from 
YouTube to Netflix. It recently rose to fame again  
[0:26] with an unintended Twitter storm that ended in 
Theo contributing $5,000 to the project, which got  
[0:32] me thinking. People think of FFmpeg as a silent 
library rather than something they can pretty much  
[0:37] do anything with. I mean, FFmpeg is just this 
incredible like what would you call a library  
[0:42] system? Not only is open source and completely 
free, it's probably the safest and highest quality  
[0:46] option out there. Everything else is mostly an 
FFmpeg wrapper. Every single application OBS  
[0:51] probably fmp underneath the hood. all the prof 
everything ffmpeg underneath the hood. But it  
[0:56] has one huge problem. It's overwhelming and like 
other familiar open source projects, it gives the  
[1:01] user so much power eventually facing them with the 
paradox of choice and endless amount of switches  
[1:06] to config. I I think ffmpeg like they have all 
these sort of parameters that you can add on  
[1:11] the command line. It's like one of those cryptic 
languages that only very few wizards understand.  
[1:17] I'm here to say that FFmpeg isn't this impossible 
tool for genius dark basement low-level engineers.  
[1:23] And the truth is, you don't need to be an expert 
to bend video, images, or audio to your will. You  
[1:28] just need to know the right secrets and how to 
put them to use. And yes, every once in a while,  
[1:32] use a rubber. In this video, I'm going to 
show you how to do everything with FFmpeg,  
[1:36] but also how to add a touch that makes using 
it smooth. Well, like coconut oil. We'll go  
[1:42] from FFmpeg's surprising history to the simple 
copypaste commands that will completely change how  
[1:46] you work with media forever. FFmpeg is probably 
one of the most consequential libraries of our  
[1:51] day and does not get the love it deserves. I just 
love it. I just think they're the best. Let's get  
[1:56] started. FFmpeg's name is basically fastforward 
Meg. Remember Meg? I mean the first version way  
[2:02] back then. Who here remembers the early 2000s 
internet? that wild west of websites where dancing  
[2:08] babies and rotating word art gifts were at the 
height of cool and every video you wanted to watch  
[2:13] required a specific often terrible player to be 
downloaded. It was a mess. But out of that chaos,  
[2:18] a legendary programmer, the same genius who later 
gave us Chem, the virtualization tool many of you  
[2:24] container users run daily, started a secret 
side project. He was building a key that could  
[2:28] unlock every media format. Little did anyone know 
this tool FFmpeg was quietly becoming the hidden  
[2:34] backbone of the entire internet's video. The logo 
represents a zigzag scan pattern that shows how  
[2:39] meg codecs handle entropy encoding a lossless data 
compression. And if me saying that brings up this  
[2:44] memory, then we're in good company. Doubled it. 
I'm Piper, ladies and gentlemen. Let's hear it  
[2:50] for them. Okay, a nice trip down memory lane, but 
how do you use it? FFmpeg is a group of libraries  
[2:55] for developers, but we're here for the CLI. So, 
let's start simple but essential. I have this cut  
[3:01] from a previous video. I still remember the day, 
the moment. Yeah, fancy. Most commands require an  
[3:06] input introduced by hyphen i and then a file. When 
a video involved, you'll often have vf for video  
[3:13] filter followed by what you're looking for. We're 
shortening this video to 10 frames per second. 320  
[3:19] pixels is our width and minus1 tells ffmpeg to 
calculate the height keeping the ratio intact.  
[3:25] Lancos is a highquality algo for resizing 
especially when downscaling. C colon V stands  
[3:30] for codec for video which in our case is GIF. 
Now you'll see the use of many algorithm names in  
[3:35] different processes. Don't worry about remembering 
all of them. We'll talk about that. Okay, it runs  
[3:40] lots of output in the logs including useful 
data. Let's just jump straight to what we made  
[3:45] a beautiful GIF that's way way too small. Let's 
fix that. Now while FFmpeg is hard to remember  
[3:50] configuration of once you have that oneliner 
changing is easy. Oh, and if you're not using vi  
[3:56] mode in the terminal, that's exactly why you want 
to start. 320, changes to 920, let it run again,  
[4:03] uh, 1.8 megabytes of a nicely sized GIF, and job 
done. Do you have any idea just how many times I  
[4:10] looked for online gift creators where I can upload 
a small video, wait, watch ads, run shady client  
[4:16] code injected into my browser just to get this. 
I'm too embarrassed to say. Since we now have a  
[4:21] form of an image, let's talk about images. For 
this trick, I'm going to use this thumbnail for  
[4:25] a neim debugging video. A fairly large image of 3 
megabytes. To shrink it, you can open a number of  
[4:32] tools or online utilities, but ffmpeg can easily 
handle images. I for input takes the file name.  
[4:38] Then the video filter, which will hold one pair 
of scale, and we'll fix that to 800 600. Lastly,  
[4:44] the output file and wham, 54 kilobytes, which are 
actually kabytes to be correct, but that's not the  
[4:50] time for that. Let's see what we got. A lovely 
distorted image. Mission accomplished. Well, you  
[4:55] could use the trick from earlier. Just add minus 
one to the tool to do the calculation. And there  
[5:00] we have a nicely shrunk image. Perfect aspect 
ratio of 51 kilobytes. Job's done. Perfectly  
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work. And now back to the video. There comes a  
[6:23] time that you want to separate audio from video. 
We used to call it audio ripping back in the happy  
[6:28] 2000s when we wanted the MTV tracks music only. 
Well, let's take the glamorous clip from earlier.  
[6:34] This time with a VN flag, which the doc suggests 
stands for video no or no video, meaning audio.  
[6:42] Then a codec of MP3. This is actually old syntax, 
but you'll see it a lot, right? So, output.mpp3 is  
[6:48] ready to play. How about VC for the job? And there 
we have the beautifully ripped MP3 audio track.  
[6:54] I still remember the day, the moment. Okay, GIFs 
and imageing is easy, right? Let's compress video,  
[7:00] shall we? That's one of the main selling points 
of FFmpeg after all. And I understand compression,  
[7:05] which is another super fascinating technical uh 
set of problems that I don't know. I just FFmpeg  
[7:12] just fills me with joy. Same input, this time a 
video codec by the name of Libx264, a well-known,  
[7:18] widely used compression standard that's both 
efficient and high quality. CRF here is a rate  
[7:23] factor. Not a straightforward term, but basically 
balances quality and file size. It goes from 0 to  
[7:28] 63, where zero is higher quality and larger files, 
and a higher index means the opposite. However,  
[7:34] 23 is a common default with good balance, so you'd 
normally see people and other software just use  
[7:39] that. It takes about three whole seconds and the 
video is out. A quick look shows 3.3 megabytes out  
[7:45] of the previous 15.2. Is it any good though? Well, 
not too bad if you ask me. Not bad at all. So,  
[7:51] you're probably thinking, am I going to 
have to remember all of these numbers  
[7:55] just mentioned? Well, you don't have to. And if 
you're really against scripting and automation,  
[8:00] here's an open source exactly for that. Handbreak 
offers much friendlier experience with its easy to  
[8:05] use interface. It comes with readymade presets for 
devices and platforms. you can quickly get great  
[8:10] results without diving deep into technical flax. 
It's perfect for everyday users who want simple,  
[8:15] highquality video compression. Although, I must 
point out that while Handbreak uses codecs like  
[8:20] we've seen earlier, it does not use FFmpeg or its 
libraries under the hood. Here's another extremely  
[8:25] useful feature you probably didn't know about 
FFmpeg. It's a device capture. What does that  
[8:30] mean? It can capture your video cams, microphones, 
both together, but also, and far, far more  
[8:35] importantly, your screens. Yes, ffmpeg is a screen 
capture utility. This is how you list devices  
[8:42] for AV foundation format which is Mac specific. 
Windows users would have the show there for the  
[8:47] direct show media format while Linux users can use 
one of the few like like V412 for video or also.  
[8:55] So there's my list of both video and audio devices 
from screens through my iPhone that's waiting on  
[9:00] my desk to my DSLR cam or meeting webcam on top. 
I can grab any of them and what they see or hear  
[9:06] right from FFmpeg. Remember Zuckerberg was taping 
both his Max Face Cam and his microphone. Well,  
[9:12] look how easy it is to script something that 
captures everything at once. I think he was  
[9:16] worried for a good reason. Let's start with 
the screen capture. 7 is my main screen. So,  
[9:20] let's get it into the list of flags here, which by 
now you probably know most of. So, let's just let  
[9:25] things run. Time to move things on the screen 
to see how smooth it comes out. I'll drag the  
[9:29] finder around, stop recording with Ctrl + C, and 
let it gracefully shut down. This is what came  
[9:34] out. Here's the window moving around. Not too bad 
for a 22 megabytes file. One thing that is missing  
[9:39] here is the cursor. Want it in. There's a flag for 
that. Capture cursor. Run again. This time with a  
[9:45] dragged window while it's playing a GIF. Let's 
see how it went. And there it is, even playing  
[9:48] the GIF from the start. Now, here's the fun part. 
Capturing live devices. Let's go with five listed  
[9:54] as my iPhone camera, which is immediately turned 
on and telling me the Mac has control. Let's pick  
[9:59] it up and see whether FFmpeg actually gets input 
from it. Open the video and what do you know?  
[10:05] Hello, that's my screen. There's the camera and a 
bunch of cables. Mind you, I did use 60 frames per  
[10:10] second here like a crazy person, which explains 
the shakiness of what you're seeing. Nevertheless,  
[10:15] it works. This brings up malicious ideas 
to mind, but let's leave this aside.  
[10:20] about that shakiness. FFmpeg has a solution for 
that as well. It's literally called a shakiness  
[10:25] index and accuracy added to it. I didn't have a 
lot of success with this specifically, but I'd be  
[10:30] very keen to hear from others who did. Just before 
automating things, FFmpeg can even burn watermarks  
[10:36] on media for you. Don't believe it? Look at that. 
Video filter with draw text and the text itself to  
[10:42] add. This can also take a font color and size and 
even a canvas coordinates. Let it run. It's done.  
[10:47] And there you have it. burnt on the top left hand 
side corner should you ever need that kind of mark  
[10:52] burnt on media you publish. Okay, how about we 
start automating? Even after sharing all these  
[10:58] flags and covering what each means, there's no way 
I'll remember it all in the second I need a GIF  
[11:03] for shrinking an image. So, while there are many 
ways to script commands, here's my choice. A twin,  
[11:08] while serving as my command history manager, 
has also a scripting system that's especially  
[11:13] relevant here because it's easily tweaked. A twins 
scripts new make gif will be the example I pick  
[11:18] here to create gifs on the fly. If we ever need 
changes beyond what's configured at twins scripts  
[11:23] edit make gif will load it into the configured 
editor for changes. I made an entire video on  
[11:28] a twin scripts. I'll link it up here. But for now 
let's create a gif automation. The oneliner takes  
[11:32] its place here. But configured parameters will 
live between double curly bracket pairs making  
[11:37] them configurable interactively. I'll do that with 
my input full file and then the output file name.  
[11:43] Obviously, I can change the scale, FPS, etc. But 
for now, this will do. At scripts, run make GIF,  
[11:49] which I, by the way, mapped to ASR locally, 
asks for values backwards, starting with the  
[11:54] output file name, then the input file, which 
I can't remember. So, T-Max to the rescue. And  
[11:59] there it is. And there's our new GIF created 
from automation. Now that you've wrapped your  
[12:04] head around FFmpeg, you're ready to put things in 
use. But like we mentioned, it can be quite a lot  
[12:10] taking it all in the flags, the switches, and 
then configs. I mentioned a twin scripts while  
[12:15] presenting my choice for automating FFmpeg. But 
you won't only getting the scripts. A twin is  
[12:19] an entire history manager with data persistency, 
fuzzy finding, and a powerful sync system that I  
[12:25] can't work without. Check it in the video up here 
and let me know in the comments what you think.  
[12:30] Don't forget to check out Kinsta for a faster, 
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[12:35] on screen or the link in the description. Thank 
you for watching and I'll see you on the next