How can I merge all the videos in a folder to make a single video file using FFMPEG

Question

I have a folder with 20+ video files and I need to merge them to make one long video file. How can I achieve this using FFMPEG in Python?

I know the following command

ffmpeg -vcodec copy -isync -i \ "concat:file1.mp4|file2.mp4|...|fileN.mp4" \

outputfile.mp4

But I'd rather not type all the names of the 20+ files.

Solution 1

This is what I've ended up using...

find *.mp4 | sed 's:\ :\\\ :g'| sed 's/^/file /' > fl.txt; ffmpeg -f concat -i fl.txt -c copy output.mp4; rm fl.txt

It's ugliness pains me but it seems to work ok and it handles spaces in the file names. Also, not sure why OP was asking about python - no need to use something lovely like python when some dirty old bash/sed will do the trick! ;)

ps: I know this is an old post but if googling "ffmpeg concat" brought me here it will probably bring other poor souls here too. Note the above will probably only work if all your files have the same settings/codecs.

pps: @Stackdave says he managed to delete his video folder with this back in the day! I've really no idea how that could have happened and I've had no complaints since but as always when copying and pasting randomish snippets of bash you found on the internet Caveat Emptor!

Solution 2

can be a single line bash command:

for f in *.mp4 ; do echo file \'$f\' >> list.txt; done && ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -c copy stitched-video.mp4 && rm list.txt

make sure all video files are exactly the same frame size and audio-video codecs.

Else you may convert them while concatenating:

for f in *.mp4 ; do echo file \'$f\' >> list.txt; done && ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -s 1280x720 -crf 24 stitched-video.mp4 && rm list.txt

Solution 3

Use this:

cat *.mp4  | ffmpeg  -i pipe: -c:a copy -c:v copy all.mp4

Another solution:

create a text file like this:

mylist.txt

file '/path/to/file1'
file '/path/to/file2'
file '/path/to/file3'

and use ffmpeg concat:

ffmpeg -f concat -i mylist.txt -c copy all.mp4

more infos

Solution 4

Here's a Windows batch file to concatenate all .avi files in a directory:

for %%f in (*.avi) do (
    echo file %%f >> list.txt
)
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list.txt -c copy output.avi
del list.txt

See Concatenate in ffmpeg docs.

Solution 5

If ffmpeg won't like the *.mp4 you can just do this in place of the file list;

ls -1 *.mp4 | perl -0pe 's/\n/|/g;s/\|$//g'

but I think your example is not following specification, so you may want this:

for F in *.mp4 ; do
    ffmpeg -i $F -c copy -bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb -f mpegts $(echo $F | perl -pe 's/mp4$/ts/g');
done
ffmpeg -i "concat:$(ls -1 *.ts | perl -0pe 's/\n/|/g;s/\|$//g')" -c copy -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc outputfile.mp4

also see this similar question

View more solutions

Comments

[Dietrich Epp]

Or just echo *.mp4 | tr ' ' '|', if your files have no spaces in their names.

[stackdave]

i've deleted all my files on the folder video with your script ! warning

[Roger Heathcote]

Sorry to hear that Dave! reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/7u92m8/…

[Gaurang Arora]

Thanks llogan. Fixed.

[Dami]

This works for me. Always safe to convert and concat with second command. Thank You.

[soywiz]

Thanks! I had a list of videos like video-1.mp4, video-2.mp4, video-10.mp4..., and the files needed to be sorted. Here a version sorting the files with mixed strings a numbers: rm list.txt; for f in *.mp4 ; do echo file \'$f\' >> list.txt; done && sort -V list.txt > list-sort.txt && ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i list-sort.txt -c copy stitched-video.mp4 ; rm list.txt list-sort.txt

[Billy]

windows not woking

[gimmegimme]

Thank unfortunately, the file i'm dealing with has spaces in it's file name. echo file "%%f" >> list.txt was not enough. cmd stops once it encounters the first space character.

[gimmegimme]

NVM, the following helped, superuser.com/questions/1574718/… . Instead of double quotes, use single quote, echo file '%%f' >> list.txt, then after the for function block AND before the statement "ffmpeg -f concat -safe...", place the following statement on its own line, sed -i "s/\"/'/g" list.txt