Python and FFmpeg Guide

FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. Python is often used to automate FFmpeg commands for batch processing video and audio.

Prerequisites

Install FFmpeg: You must have the ffmpeg executable installed on your system and added to your PATH.
- Windows: Download from ffmpeg.org or use winget install ffmpeg.
- macOS: brew install ffmpeg.
- Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg.

Method 1: Using `subprocess` (Standard Library)

The most direct way to use FFmpeg is by calling the command line tool using Python's built-in subprocess module.

Basic Conversion

import subprocess

# Convert input.mp4 to output.avi
command = ['ffmpeg', '-i', 'input.mp4', 'output.avi']

subprocess.run(command)

Suppressing Output

FFmpeg is very verbose. You can suppress the output using subprocess.DEVNULL.

import subprocess

subprocess.run(['ffmpeg', '-i', 'input.mp4', 'output.mp3'], 
               stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL, 
               stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)

Method 2: Using `ffmpeg-python` (Wrapper Library)

For complex filters and pipelines, constructing command line strings can be error-prone. The ffmpeg-python library provides a Pythonic interface.

Installation

pip install ffmpeg-python

Basic Usage

import ffmpeg

stream = ffmpeg.input('input.mp4')
stream = ffmpeg.output(stream, 'output.mp4')
ffmpeg.run(stream)

Complex Filters (Flip and Resize)

import ffmpeg

(
    ffmpeg
    .input('input.mp4')
    .hflip()              # Horizontal flip
    .filter('scale', size='1280:720') # Resize
    .output('output.mp4')
    .run()
)

Common Tasks

Extract Audio from Video

import subprocess

# -vn disables video recording
cmd = ['ffmpeg', '-i', 'video.mp4', '-vn', 'audio.mp3']
subprocess.run(cmd)

Get Video Metadata (ffprobe)

You can use ffprobe to get JSON metadata about a file.

import ffmpeg

try:
    probe = ffmpeg.probe('video.mp4')
    video_stream = next((stream for stream in probe['streams'] if stream['codec_type'] == 'video'), None)
    width = int(video_stream['width'])
    height = int(video_stream['height'])
    print(f"Resolution: {width}x{height}")
except ffmpeg.Error as e:
    print(e.stderr)

programming/python/python

Created: March 17, 2026 • Last Modified: January 28, 2026

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