Background/goal:

In my workflow, sometimes I need a quick video manipulation. No time for those GUI mouse-click-click video editing app.

Toys:

• mpv - Cross platform media player.
• ffmpeg - Anything audio-video. Record, convert, stream, or even summon Kraken with it.
• youtube-dl - One ring to rule them all. Download video from more than 900+ video sites.

Go crazy into ffmpeg documentation or discussions.

Below are my frequent actions. Tweet me your other fav command..

Get video size

Get width x height (ref: link)

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 \
-show_entries stream=width,height -of csv=s=x:p=0 input.mp4

or simply just

ffprobe video.mp4

Resize video dimension

Resize to width 640, keep aspect ratio with -1 (ref: ffmpeg scaling)

ffmpeg -i output.mp4 -vf scale=640:-1 test.mp4

Play/seek video time

Play:

• mpv boring_long_video.mp4 or mpv *
• o - Show onscreen display

Seek time:

• [ ] - decrease/increase playback speed
• Shift+Ctrl+BACKSPACE - mark position.

More in mpv documentation

Cut video

Cut from minutes 44:24 , up to 49 seconds (ref: link)

ffmpeg -ss 00:44:24 -i file.mp4 -to 00:00:49 -c copy file-copy.mp4

Create empty video

• With image (ref: link):

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i image.png -t 900 -r 1 -c:v libx264 image.mp4

• Without image (ref: link):

ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=gray:s=320x240:d=10 \
-vf "drawtext=text='BIJY':fontcolor=white" output.mp4

Reverse & flip video

Quick way to create a reverse meme video (ref: link):

ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf reverse -af areverse rev.mp4

Flip horizontal/vertical (ref: link):

ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf vflip -c:a copy vflip.mp4
ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf hflip -c:a copy hflip.mp4

Rotate 90-> or <-90:

ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf transpose=1 -c:a copy rotate.mp4
ffmpeg -i vid.mp4 -vf transpose=2 -c:a copy rotate.mp4

Subtitling

Burn subtitle (.srt file) into the video file (ref: link):

ffmpeg -i test.mp4 \
-vf "subtitles=subtitlefile.srt:force_style='Fontsize=40,PrimaryColour=&Hffffff&'" \
 -c:a copy test-subtitle.mp4

Fix video for Twitter post

If somehow video not accepted by Twitter (don't ask why) (ref: link, link):

ffmpeg -i test.mov -vcodec libx264 \
-vf 'scale=640:trunc(ow/a/2)*2' \
-acodec aac -vb 1024k -minrate 1024k -maxrate 1024k \
-bufsize 1024k -ar 44100 -strict experimental -r 30 test.mp4