Ffmpeg Patterns

This is your reference guide when you need to wrangle video or audio with FFmpeg and can't remember the exact flag incantation. It covers the common patterns: transcoding to different formats, extracting clips, resizing with proper aspect ratios, adding watermarks, normalizing audio, concatenating files, generating HLS streams, and batch processing entire directories. The examples are copy-paste ready with actual parameters instead of placeholders. Especially useful for the tricky stuff like speed adjustments with audio sync, multi-bitrate streaming setups, and hardware acceleration flags. Keep it open when you're doing media processing so you're not constantly searching Stack Overflow for the difference between setpts and atempo.

skills.sh installs: 342
GitHub stars: 2
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add mindmorass/reflex --skill ffmpeg-patterns --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

FFmpeg Patterns

Best practices for video and audio processing with FFmpeg.

Basic Operations

Transcode Video

# Convert to MP4 (H.264 + AAC)
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -preset medium -crf 23 \
       -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4

# Convert to WebM (VP9 + Opus)
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -crf 30 -b:v 0 \
       -c:a libopus -b:a 128k output.webm

# Convert to HLS for streaming
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -codec: copy -start_number 0 \
       -hls_time 10 -hls_list_size 0 -f hls output.m3u8

Extract Audio

# Extract audio to MP3
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -acodec mp3 -ab 192k audio.mp3

# Extract audio to WAV (uncompressed)
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -acodec pcm_s16le audio.wav

# Extract audio from specific time range
ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -ss 00:01:00 -t 00:00:30 -vn audio.mp3

Trim and Cut

# Cut from timestamp to duration
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:01:30 -t 00:02:00 -c copy output.mp4

# Cut from start to end timestamp
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:01:30 -to 00:03:30 -c copy output.mp4

# Fast seek (put -ss before -i for large files)
ffmpeg -ss 00:10:00 -i large_video.mp4 -t 00:05:00 -c copy clip.mp4