May 26, 2008

How-To: Use ffmpeg2theora to Create Theora Video Files

Updated: May 26, 2008

'ffmpeg2theora' is a nice command line tool which allows you to convert many video formats into Theora Video files. You can specify the desired video and audio quality of the output file, or you can encode only a certain portion of the video by specifying the start time and end time. For example, let's say we want to convert some VOB file from a DVD, but only starting at minute 18 and ending at minute 33, using a quality factor of 6 (default is 5) and an audio bitrate of 192 (default is 128). You would issue this command:

ffmpeg2theora -s 1020 -e 1920 -v6 -A192 FILE.VOB -o ~/theora_video.ogg

The start time and end time are specified in seconds, so 1020 seconds is minute 18 (that is, after 17 minutes elapsed) and 1920 seconds is minute 33. The new theora video file will be saved as 'theora_video.ogg' in your home directory. Instead of '-s' and '-e' we could have used '--starttime' and '--endtime'. It's the same thing. To convert the whole file using default settings and don't bother with options, use the command:

ffmpeg2theora FILE.VOB -o ~/theora_video.ogg

'ffmpeg2theora' also supports many other options, like the width and height, contrast, brightness, gamma, saturation. You can also fill in metadata, like artist or title:

ffmpeg2theora --artist "Pink Floyd" --title "Live at Pompeii [1972]" FILE.VOB -o ~/pf_pompeii.ogg

1 comment:

Guillermo Alvarez said...

I have been using this tool successfully but i am wondering if i could get a little help making a script. What i want is to have a script that i can run with an automator folder action to where when i add a file into a specified folder it will convert that file into an ogv file using ffmpeg2theora.

(I have never written a single script in my life)