Resizing videos and images using ffmpeg

Background

If you are a developer and a geek and need to work on the images/videos formatting in terms of cropping, scaling or resizing then you can use FFmpeg for that. Static build for FFmpeg is available on -

• https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/

which you can download and store it on your local machine to use.

I have even added this to my Linux PATH so that I can access it from anywhere. If you are not aware how to do that refer -

• How to permanently set $PATH on Linux?

Once you have added FFmpeg in your PATH you can simply run ffmpeg to see the help content -

Specifically, if you are working on making Android or iOS apps or chrome plugin and you have an icon of standard size and you want to resize it to fit other aspect ratios supported by the corresponding platforms then FFmpeg really comes in handy.

Rescaling images with FFmpeg

I have a simple icon with size 256*256 to be used as replay button.

 I want it in 128*128 size.  You can do this with the following command -

• ffmpeg -i icon-256.png -vf scale="128:128" icon-128.png

And if you want 48*48 you can similarly do -

• ffmpeg -i icon-256.png -vf scale="48:48" icon-48.png

If you want to want to retain the aspect ration you can do -

• ffmpeg -i icon-256.png -vf scale="128:-1" icon-128.png

You can do similar resizing for a video instead of an image -

• ffmpeg -i input.avi -vf scale="320:240" output.avi

If you want your image to be based on the actual image size then you can do that as well. For eg. You want the image to be double size of what the size it actually is -

• ffmpeg -i icon-256.png -vf scale="iw*2:ih*2" icon-double.png

Since this is double this would be 512*512 since original was 256*256.
Similarly, if you want half you can do -

•  ffmpeg -i icon-256.png -vf scale="iw/2:ih/2" icon-half.png

 Since this is half this would be 128*128 since original was 256*256.

NOTE :

• iw : input width
• ih : input height

Related Links

•  https://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/
• How to permanently set $PATH on Linux?(OSFG) 
• Create a gif from a video using FFmpeg with good quality[OSFG]