At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. Unredistributable if compiled with any software with a license incompatible with the GPL įFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. X86, ARM, PowerPC, MIPS, RISC-V, DEC Alpha, Blackfin, AVR32, SH-4, and SPARC may be compiled for other desktop computers So with -c you can control all the types of streams, whereas -acodec and -vcodec are just shortcuts for the audio or video subsets thereof.Various, including Windows, macOS, and Linux ( executable programs are only available from third parties, as the project only distributes source code) This is saying use the original codec for all the steams ( -c copy), but for the second video stream use libx264 ( -c:v:1 libx264), and for the 138th audio stream use libvorbis ( -c:a:137 libvorbis). So to put it all together consider this command from the docįfmpeg -i INPUT -map 0 -c copy -c:v:1 libx264 -c:a:137 libvorbis OUTPUT There is also a -vcodec that works the same way for video streams. Indicate that the stream is not to be re-encoded. Name of a decoder/encoder or a special value copy (output only) to codec codec (input/output,per-stream) Select an encoder (when used before an output file) or a decoder (when used before an input file) for one or more streams. acodec:1 is the same as -codec:a:1 and indicates you are setting the codec for the second audio stream (the first audio stream is 0).

acodec is a subset of that functionality that automatically scopes to Audio streams c or -codec is a generic stream selector, so you can use it to set the codec for any of the streams be they audio or video.

Ffmpeg codec