October 2025 - ffmpeg-user - lists.ffmpeg.org

ffmpeg ignores MP3 comment tag when transcodiing
by Ulf Zibis 26 Nov '25

26 Nov '25

Hi, when i use the lame encoder directly, the comment tag of a mp3 file is conserved: $ lame -V1 in.mp3 out.mp3 LAME 3.100 64bits (http://lame.sf.net) Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 19383 Hz - 19916 Hz Encoding in.mp3 to out.mp3 Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III VBR(q=1) Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA 10104/10104 (100%)| 0:04/ 0:04| 0:04/ 0:04| 54.411x| 0:00 32 [ 29] * 40 [ 0] 48 [ 0] 56 [ 0] 64 [ 0] 80 [ 0] 96 [ 0] 112 [ 2] % 128 [ 0] 160 [ 0] 192 [ 2473] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%* 224 [ 5892] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 256 [ 1506] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%* 320 [ 202] %%% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- kbps LR MS % long switch short % 222.3 98.3 1.7 95.7 2.3 2.0 Writing LAME Tag...done ReplayGain: +2.1dB $ mediainfo out.mp3 General Complete name : out.mp3 Format : MPEG Audio File size : 7.04 MiB Duration : 4 min 23 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 222 kb/s Album : A Momentary Lapse Of Reason Album/Performer : Pink Floyd Track name : Signs Of Life Track name/Position : 01 Performer : Pink Floyd Genre : Rock Recorded date : 1987 Writing library : LAME3.100 Cover : Yes Cover type : Cover (front) Cover MIME : image/jpeg Comment : Columbia Records 2005 Remastered Edition. Audio Format : MPEG Audio Format version : Version 1 Format profile : Layer 3 Format settings : Joint stereo Duration : 4 min 23 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 222 kb/s Minimum bit rate : 32.0 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz Frame rate : 38.281 FPS (1152 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 6.99 MiB (99%) Writing library : LAME3.100 Encoding settings : -m j -V 1 -q 0 -lowpass 19.5 --vbr-new -b 32 Image Format : JPEG Width : 500 pixels Height : 500 pixels Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 51.9 KiB (1%) Using ffmpeg, the comment tag is lost: $ ffmpeg -i in.mp3 -q 1 -c:v copy out.mp3 ffmpeg version 6.1.1-3ubuntu5 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 13 (Ubuntu 13.2.0-23ubuntu3) configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version=3ubuntu5 --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --arch=amd64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --disable-omx --enable-gnutls --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdio --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libdav1d --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libglslang --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzimg --enable-openal --enable-opencl --enable-opengl --disable-sndio --enable-libvpl --disable-libmfx --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-ladspa --enable-libbluray --enable-libjack --enable-libpulse --enable-librabbitmq --enable-librist --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libx264 --enable-libzmq --enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-sdl2 --enable-libplacebo --enable-librav1e --enable-pocketsphinx --enable-librsvg --enable-libjxl --enable-shared libavutil 58. 29.100 / 58. 29.100 libavcodec 60. 31.102 / 60. 31.102 libavformat 60. 16.100 / 60. 16.100 libavdevice 60. 3.100 / 60. 3.100 libavfilter 9. 12.100 / 9. 12.100 libswscale 7. 5.100 / 7. 5.100 libswresample 4. 12.100 / 4. 12.100 libpostproc 57. 3.100 / 57. 3.100 Incorrect BOM value Error reading comment frame, skipped Incorrect BOM value Error reading lyrics, skipped Input #0, mp3, from 'in.mp3': Metadata: album : A Momentary Lapse Of Reason genre : Rock title : Signs Of Life artist : Pink Floyd track : 01 album_artist : Pink Floyd date : 1987 Duration: 00:04:23.97, start: 0.025056, bitrate: 321 kb/s Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 320 kb/s Metadata: encoder : LAME3.97 Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 500x500 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn (attached pic) Metadata: comment : Cover (front) Stream mapping: Stream #0:1 -> #0:0 (copy) Stream #0:0 -> #0:1 (mp3 (mp3float) -> mp3 (libmp3lame)) Press [q] to stop, [?] for help Output #0, mp3, to 'out.mp3': Metadata: TALB : A Momentary Lapse Of Reason TCON : Rock TIT2 : Signs Of Life TPE1 : Pink Floyd TRCK : 01 TPE2 : Pink Floyd TDRC : 1987 TSSE : Lavf60.16.100 Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 500x500 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1:1], q=2-31, 90k tbr, 90k tbn (attached pic) Metadata: comment : Cover (front) Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp Metadata: encoder : Lavc60.31.102 libmp3lame [out#0/mp3 @ 0x5853cd73b540] video:52kB audio:7174kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.005825% size= 7226kB time=00:04:23.89 bitrate= 224.3kbits/s speed=53.3x $ mediainfo out.mp3 General Complete name : out.mp3 Format : MPEG Audio File size : 7.06 MiB Duration : 4 min 23 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 223 kb/s Album : A Momentary Lapse Of Reason Album/Performer : Pink Floyd Track name : Signs Of Life Track name/Position : 01 Performer : Pink Floyd Genre : Rock Recorded date : 1987 Writing library : LAME3.100 Cover : Yes Cover type : Cover (front) Cover MIME : image/jpeg Audio Format : MPEG Audio Format version : Version 1 Format profile : Layer 3 Format settings : Joint stereo Duration : 4 min 23 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 224 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz Frame rate : 38.281 FPS (1152 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 7.01 MiB (99%) Writing library : LAME3.100 Image Format : JPEG Width : 500 pixels Height : 500 pixels Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 51.9 KiB (1%) How can I conserve the comment tag? -Ulf

1 1

To find IDR-frames with time stamps
by Richard Bartczak 01 Nov '25

01 Nov '25

Hello, I assume to be on a good way if I use this as presuppostion : ffprobe -loglevel error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries packet=pts_time,flags,key -sexagesimal -of csv=print_section=0 "21 Bridges.ts" > txt And here I got the info : https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/19250/how-to-identify-i-frame-fro… "Frames with key_frame 1 (will have picture type I) are IDR frames. I frames with key_frame 0 are not." Now my question how to combine it ? To get the timestamp and an indication of an IDR-frame ? Regards Richard

2 3

ffprobe pts output in a format like hh:mm:ss:ms
by Richard Bartczak 30 Oct '25

30 Oct '25

Hello, The followiing output of : ffprobe -loglevel error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries packet=pts_time,flags -of csv=print_section=0 "21 Bridges.ts" 0.044000,K__, 0.124000,___, 0.084000,___, 0.064000,___, 0.104000,___, 0.204000,___, 0.164000,___, 0.144000,___, 0.184000,___, 0.284000,___, 0.244000,___, 0.224000,___, 0.264000,___, 0.364000,___, 0.324000,___, ... Is it possible to get a timestamp format like : hh:mm:ss:ms ? Also I search for the description of all possible flags like "K". Regards Richard

3 13

ISSUE ABOUT AUDIO PARAMETERS
by Hervé ANSELME 29 Oct '25

29 Oct '25

Hello all, I am using the release 6.1 of ffmpeg, running on Windows 11 Family OS. I executed the following command : ffmpeg -i "source movie" -y -loglevel error -sn ^ -map 0:m:language:fre -acodec aac -ar 48k -b:a 192k ^ -map 0:m:language:eng -acodec aac -ar 48k -b:a 128k -ac 6 -channel_layout 5.1 -mapping_family:a 255 ^ -map 0:v:0 -vcodec libsvtav1 "destination movie" in order to encode differently the selected audio tracks. I noticed in the destination movie, is that the french audio track has effectively a 192k bitrate ; but the english audio track kept the same bitrate as the english audio track of the source movie, which is not 128k. So, is there a way to have the wished audios bitrates, with different bitrates among the selected audio tracks ? If there is a way, how is it possible to do that ? Thank you in advance for your replies and advices. Regards, HA

4 7

Use of libvmaf
by Richard Bartczak 28 Oct '25

28 Oct '25

Hello, often I see a lot of possible download entries, e.g.: youtube with different resollutions, fps, codecs .: ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS CH │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO 91 mp4 190x144 24 │ ~117.35MiB 171k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400B mp4a.40.5 [de] 160 mp4 190x144 24 │ 43.40MiB 63k https │ avc1.4d400b 63k video only 144p, mp4_dash 278 webm 190x144 24 │ 43.53MiB 63k https │ vp9 63k video only 144p, webm_dash 92 mp4 316x240 24 │ ~208.63MiB 304k m3u8 │ avc1.4D400D mp4a.40.5 [de] 133 mp4 316x240 24 │ 92.43MiB 135k https │ avc1.4d400d 135k video only 240p, mp4_dash 242 webm 316x240 24 │ 76.00MiB 111k https │ vp9 111k video only 240p, webm_dash 93 mp4 476x360 24 │ ~465.93MiB 679k m3u8 │ avc1.4D4015 mp4a.40.2 [de] 134 mp4 476x360 24 │ 175.65MiB 256k https │ avc1.4d4015 256k video only 360p, mp4_dash 18 mp4 476x360 24 2 │ 241.12MiB 352k https │ avc1.42001E mp4a.40.2 44k [de] 360p 243 webm 476x360 24 │ 130.76MiB 191k https │ vp9 191k video only 360p, webm_dash 94 mp4 634x480 24 │ ~791.92MiB 1155k m3u8 │ avc1.4D401E mp4a.40.2 [de] 135 mp4 634x480 24 │ 361.36MiB 527k https │ avc1.4d401e 527k video only 480p, mp4_dash 244 webm 634x480 24 │ 212.30MiB 310k https │ vp9 310k video only 480p, webm_dash 95 mp4 950x720 24 │ ~ 1.31GiB 1958k m3u8 │ avc1.64001F mp4a.40.2 [de] 136 mp4 950x720 24 │ 683.84MiB 997k https │ avc1.64001f 997k video only 720p, mp4_dash 247 webm 950x720 24 │ 401.41MiB 585k https │ vp9 585k video only 720p, webm_dash Is it possible to find out with libvmaf which of them is the nearest to the source with the highest vmaf score, as like an reverse engineering ? Richard

1 0

compression with libx265 of H.262 interlace video does not lead to acceptable results, wrong parameter used ?
by Richard Bartczak 27 Oct '25

27 Oct '25

Hello, I use ffmpeg 8.0, lib x265 to compress videos. The coomand : #!/bin/sh for f in *.ts; do ffmpeg -y -i "$f" -vcodec libx265 -crf 19 -preset slow -vf yadif,nlmeans="1.4:7:5:3:3" -c:a copy "$(basename "$f" .ts).mkv";done It is an interlaced video, therefore yadif, nlmeans to reduce filesize. But the result is all ways not as expected. I did check it with vivictpp (subective tool to compare two videos (same source) at a screen and libvmaf to get the respective score : Different crf values used, but without an significant improvement. source file target file vmaf crf vivictpp (checked source against target size (MB) size (MB) at one screen) 251,6 121,6 VMAF score: 93.913822 19 visible less unsharp 251,6 135,2 VMAF score: 94.189536 18 visible less unsharp 251,6 150,6 VMAF score: 94.433205 17 visible less unsharp 251,6 167,7 VMAF score: 94.648169 16 visible less unsharp 251,6 208,6 VMAF score: 95.011963 14 visible less unsharp 251,6 259,6 VMAF score: 95.011963 12 visible less unsharp the movie source : Stream #0:0[0x100]: Video: mpeg2video (Main) ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), yuv420p(tv, top first), 720x576 [SAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 90k tbn, start 0.044000 Side data: cpb: bitrate max/min/avg: 15000000/0/0 buffer size: 1835008 vbv_delay: N/A target : Stream #0:0: Video: hevc (Main), yuv420p(tv, progressive), 720x576 [SAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1k tbn Metadata: ENCODER : Lavc62.11.100 libx265 Any idea how to improve the results ? Richard

2 2

misplaced GOP headers
by Mark Filipak 27 Oct '25

27 Oct '25

Hi. I need guidance. There are two options below. There may be more that I don't know about. 1: Does anyone know of a tool to move misplaced GOP headers, and thereby close the GOPs? The video is Shoah [1985], an 8 1/2 hour, 4-part documentary covering the Nazi mass murder of European Jews during WWII. Whoever edited the source (splicing) falsely turned almost all the GOPs into open GOPs. In most cases, the GOPs are 2 frames ahead of the actual keyframes. They don't decode properly of course. I think they can be fixed only by editing the source's PES extension headers, but hopefully I'm wrong. I assume FFmpeg can't do that kind of job. 2: There may be an alternative to fixing the headers. I think that if the PES extension headers are simply removed, the frames may decode well enough for me to recode them with -start_at_zero -copyts and then synchronize audio: -itsoffset -itsscale, if necessary. I'd be very grateful for knowledgeable guidance, please. Mark.

1 0

Virus in Windows Build by BtbN
by guillaume guerin 25 Oct '25

25 Oct '25

I installed ffmpeg today using the second link here : [cid:1f10180b-4ee8-41d0-af82-3e651989419d] and was surprised to see my antivirus (Panda Dome) putting ffmpeg in quarantine when I ran a command.

3 2

ffmpeg 8.0 compiled to include libvmaf
by Richard Bartczak 25 Oct '25

25 Oct '25

Hello, Ubuntu-mate 24.04.3 please refer to https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/14747 for the detailed verbose output : I get an error if I use the yt-dlp parameter "--download-sections "*00:00 - 10:00"" see below : yt-dlp --download-sections "*00:00 - 10:00" -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -R infinite --no-playlist -N 4 "https://tele5.de/mediathek/six-bullets" Without "--download-sections "*00:00 - 10:00" " the download does work as usual. The error indication : "https or dtls protocol not found, recompile FFmpeg with openssl, gnutls or securetransport enabled. [in#0 @ 0x5cc92601c7c0] Error opening input: Protocol not found" I did compile ffmpeg with the following configuration (https://github.com/yash1994/Build-FFmpeg-with-libvmaf?tab=readme-ov-file) : |./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-nonfree --enable-libvmaf --enable-version3| |Does someone know how to solve this problem ?| |Best regards| |Richard|

2 2

GOP timecodes are wrecked
by Mark Filipak 24 Oct '25

24 Oct '25

I'm getting a better understanding of how f**ked up my source video is. It's the 1st disc of a 4 disc set. A 2:20 prologue was jammed onto the movie. Discs 2..4 are okay. In the span of 22 frames, 'side data - GOP timecode:' goes from 00:02:53:10 to 00:00:00:00 to 00:05:25:03. In that span and thereafter, GOPs are permanently misaligned relative to keyframes. Any suggestions for fixing them? Since GOPs are part of the PES extension, is there a way to simply delete them as a test? Thanks -- Mark.

1 0