HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
If you run Linux, or your server does, FFmpeg will almost certainly be available through
one of your standard repositories (although possibly in the non-free section). Note that to
do any encoding, you'll also need libraries to supply the codecs (like MP4 or OGG). On
Linux, you'll download them using the same package manager you used to install the main
binary, but Windows and Mac users may have to do a bit of extra work.
Note
If you have problems with the examples in this section, we recommend using a virtual
machine and installing one of the popular Linux distributions on it. The examples in this
chapter have been tested with Fedora 17 using FFmpeg version 0.10.4 recompiled from the
source RPM to enable FAAC.
H.2. Finding out what codecs were used on source video
The first useful thing you can do with FFmpeg is investigate which codecs have been used
on your source video. Following is an example command line:
ffmpeg -i VID_20120122_132134.mp4
This code will produce a whole load of output describing what options your FFmpeg binary
was built with, but at the end you should see something like what's shown in the following
listing.
Listing H.1. Output from the
ffmpeg -i
command
For comparison, the next listing shows the output from a file recorded on a “proper” HD
video camera.
