ffmpeg an image sequence

bash ffmpeg

5,685

It is actually possible to let ffmpeg actually handle the glob for you. Use the -pattern_type option from the image2 demuxer and wrap the glob in single quotes to prevent expansion:

ffmpeg -f image2 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' out.mp4

For older versions of FFmpeg, you could use the % character, for example:

ffmpeg -i %*.jpg out.mp4

The above is however considered deprecated.

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Author by

wim

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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

wim almost 2 years

I want to encode a sequence of images to an video file, I have done this in the past with something like:

ffmpeg -i %08d.jpg out.mp4

But first I had to rename the files to be in that %08d.jpg format. I want to just encode them and let them be in alphabetical order (or whatever) without having to rename them, is this possible? I tried with using *.jpg and ffmpeg just hung and eventually crashed.
- slhck over 11 years
  
  Not possible by default. *.jpg will simply expand to all filenames before FFmpeg even sees the asterisk. Why couldn't you just rename the files, if I may ask? Or copy them somewhere else, then rename? Maybe you can pipe the images into FFmpeg similar to cat *.jpg | ffmpeg -f image2 -i pipe: -r 25 out.mp4?
- wim over 11 years
  
  I do currently just rename the files, with a little python script, but it's a kludge and I thought it likely there was a more elegant solution I wasn't aware of. The symbolic link thing had occurred to me, too, but it's really just as much work as renaming the files anyway. I will try the pipe thing next...
- slhck over 11 years
  
  Have you tried the pipe already? Would be interested to see if that works
- wim over 11 years
  
  No, it didn't work. But on reading the man pages to try and figure out the syntax to make it work, I saw something else which solved the problem. I'll post it as an answer..
wim over 11 years

nope, and that doesn't work at all. it's explained why in the man pages.
slhck over 11 years

Be aware that the syntax you were using is considered deprecated and might be removed soon. I added the new syntax from the latest version of the FFmpeg manual but kept the old version as well.
Franck Dernoncourt almost 7 years

ffmpeg Error: Pattern type 'glob' was selected but globbing is not support ed by this libavformat build: "glob is defined in the POSIX standard and it's not available on Windows by default."