Command-line/Console window tool for batch-processing files inside a specific directory (or more) with FFmpeg
- Currently ships 64-bit binaries for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS
- Run with
--helpto read the help page (this one covers more examples though)
NOTE: This tool's goal is being simple to use and robust, (error handling-wise) to make it easy to batch-convert files without all the manual organizational headache, so suggestions are welcome
1. Installing FFmpeg
In order to use this tool you will first need to install FFmpeg, either by getting it from your system's package manager (usually a package just called 'ffmpeg'), or by downloading the binaries from a stable release, extracting them and adding the bin folder to your PATH
You can then check if your installation succeeded by running the version command below and seeing if it produces any output:
ffmpeg -version
2. Installing RFFmpeg
To install this tool, just head to the releases page and download the latest binaries for your system (if there are no pre-built ones for your system you can alternatively build the program from source)
(You can also optionally place the rffmpeg executable in the same directory as your ffmpeg binaries so you can run the tool from anywhere in your OS)
This tool's argument syntax is not that different from FFmpeg itself, with the basic structure being:
rffmpeg [PATH(S)] -i [IN-FMT(S)] -p [PARAMS] -o [OUT-FMT]
Here's a basic RFFmpeg command that looks for wav files and converts them to mp3:
rffmpeg C:\Users\Music -i wav -o mp3
Here's an example of a more specific command that looks inside two folders for .flac and .m4a files, converts them to OPUS using the libopus codec, and finally stores them in a new subfolder named 'transcoded':
rffmpeg /home/Music /home/Videos -i flac,m4a -p "-c:a libopus -vbr on -b:a 128k" -o opus -subfolder:transcoded
-
-i : one or more formats you wish to transcode separated by commas, like:
-i mp4,m4v,mkv -
-p : optional ffmpeg conversion parameters, as in:
-p "-c:v vp9 -crf 32 -c:a copy" -
-o : extension for your output files (dot is implicit)
-o webm- NOTE: If you specify identical input and output formats, use the -subfolder or -outpath option otherwise the program won't run
You can also pass any of the flags below to help you organize your batch conversions a little
-
-subfolder : puts your converted files inside a new folder (which is itself created inside the input file's directory)
- You can also give it a custom name like this:
-subfolder:你好
- You can also give it a custom name like this:
-
-outpath : puts your converted files inside a new absolute directory
- Unlike -subfolder, you have to explicitly name the new path, as in:
-outpath:/home/Music/你好
- Unlike -subfolder, you have to explicitly name the new path, as in:
-
-cl : deletes the original files permanently after conversion (don't use this if you're not sure the conversion will work properly)
-
-ow : automatically overwrites files if they conflict with the output files generated by FFmpeg (the program appends an index by default)
-
-rn : disables file searches inside subfolders, in case your directory contains many folders you don't want to mess with
-
-nt : sets a custom number of threads to be spawned at the conversion stage e.g.:
-nt:8- NOTE: the number must be a positive value between 1 and double the current online threads in the system
-
--version : displays extended version information particular to the currently installed rffmpeg executable and exits
You can build this program by simply having the LLVM clang compiler installed
To build it on (probably) most 'POSIX' systems you can run the bash build script:
./build.sh
You can also build in release mode with:
./build.sh rel
On Windows the build links with the MSVC libraries so you'll have to install that if you don't have it already (though it should be pretty easy to build with something like MinGW if you modify the batch file a little)
To build it you can run the batch build script:
.\build.cmd
Or build it in release mode like this:
.\build.cmd rel