ffmpeg filename output format

Question

When using ffmpeg to output a series of frames as images, the only format I can find documentation for is frame_%d.jpg. The %d identifier is replaced by the sequential frame count.

Are there other parameters I can use in the output file format? Specifically, I need the ability to add the timestamp of the specific frame.

Solution 1

Turns out this behavior was not yet implemented at the time.

I implemented an initial version of %t support on my fork of FFmpeg (https://github.com/yuvadm/FFmpeg), and am currently working on cleaning up the patch so that it can be merged upstream.

Solution 2

The strftime option allows you to expand the filename with date and time information. Check the documentation of the strftime() function for the syntax.

For example to generate image files from the strftime() %Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S pattern, the following ffmpeg command can be used:

ffmpeg -f v4l2 -r 1 -i /dev/video0 -f image2 -strftime 1 "%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.jpg"

Solution 3

I hacked up a bash script that creates file names based on time into the film. It uses a format: "hh_mm_ss" in the file name. You can see it at:

https://github.com/pozar/makemoviethumbs

Solution 4

Another option you'd have would be to run ffprobe -show_packets on it, and use that data to "infer" the timestamp of each generated jpg file (assuming you generate one per incoming video frame). Yikes!

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Comments

[Yuval Adam]

As far as I understand, this will output the actual time and date, while my requirement is for the running time of the video.

[Su']

Did you ever submit this to the core project? There's an open 3yr-old request (that I found while trying to do this myself).

[rogerdpack]

Unfortunately only "second" granularity (gives wall clock time) but it does work...

[rogerdpack]

Appears to require "constant" frame rate, which unfortunately I do not have :|

[Tycon]

For those of us on Ubuntu 14 who a forced to use avconv the strftime option is not available for segmentation. I couldn't find a workaround, but was able to install FFMPEG on ubuntu 14 by doing sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

[Florida]

@YuvalAdam take a look to your ffmpeg repo on github please. :)

[magixx]

@florida I've added an updated patch to trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/1452 which is Works on My Machine™ certified since I was searching for this functionality.