ffmpeg - Discovering a new Swiss Army Knife Software Tool

Over the years, I've learned that there's often one or two tools that a geek should truly master to reign over a topic. Often the tools are cryptic and have a nasty learning curve, but once you're over it, the tool will pay you back for years to come.

Here's a few examples that come to mind:

• Networking - netcat and tcpdump
• Web - Apache Rewrite Rules
• Images - ImageMagick
• MS Windows Automation - AutoHotKey

I've got a project that requires some video manipulation, and I've learned that ffmpeg is my new best friend. You can use it to convert, trim, crop, slice video. Want to add a watermark? All you need is ffmpeg. And because you can do all these things from the command line, you can also do them in a shell script, on thousands of files or from within a PHP program.

Sure, the filter syntax is confusing, but it's nice and powerful too.

If you need to tweak videos, chances are, you need ffmpeg. I definitely haven't mastered it yet, but I'm glad to spend the time to try.

Update: Just found 19 ffmpeg commands for all needs - definitely looks like a handy resource for learning some common/useful ffmpeg commands.

Update: I just added AutoHotKey to the above list. It definitely belongs: it's cryptic, yet amazingly powerful.