View on GitHub

video_processing-MP4

Development of this documentation was generously funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL): www.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au

MP4 (H.264)

🚧 This page is currently under construction, last edited on 2021-05-25 🚧

Creating .MP4 (H.264) videos with either ffmpeg or Adobe Media Encoder (CC 2018 or later)

Note: This guide was last updated November 2020. Always check the links to the software webpages for any substantial changes to installation instructions.

PARADISEC adheres to the current best-practice standards for video archiving as set by the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA).

Using FFmpeg on a Mac

Installation

FFmpeg is an efficient and cost effective way to process video. It is done by using a Command Line Interface (CLI), but once the workflow is set up, it is relatively simple.

If you are using a Mac, it is a bit more straight forward than the PC as Bash is a Unix shell (command language interpreter) and runs natively on Macs. To download FFmpeg, open a terminal window and first install Homebrew (command line package manager) with the following commands:

  1. Install Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

  1. Run Brew Doctor. This is a self-diagnostic tool to determine if everything is installed correctly.

brew doctor

  1. Install FFmpeg

brew install ffmpeg

To test if you have installed FFmpeg correctly, just type ffmpeg and enter. Information about the version of FFmpeg as well as enabled libraries should appear in your terminal window as seen in the image to the right.

To view the FFmpeg manual in the terminal window, type in:

man ffmpeg

For further help using FFmpeg, take a look at the following sites:

FFmpeg

ffmprovisor

Transcoding .MP4 to .MP4 with ffmpeg

Using ffmpeg on a PC

Linux on Windows

Activating Linux on your PC

Installing Ubuntu

Installing ffmpeg via Ubuntu

Anatomy of the ffmpeg transcode command

Return to top of page