use ffmpeg to make a video

So you’ve made some great photos and now it’s time to highlight them in a short video.

This is an actually very easy process. It can become complicated however to set up though so follow the directions clearly and you’re ready to go.

First off: yes, you can pip install ffmpeg … HOWEVER, for us noobs, let’s just make this as clear as possible.

INSTALL FFMPEG

1. go to https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html and download your package
2. I installed it c:\ffmpeg as that is going to make your life easier soon
3. We need to make sure we can access the ffmpeg command easily so:
   On a Windows machine, go to the Start Menu -> type in “environment” and then –> click on “Edit the system environment”.
   Click “Environmental Variables” at the bottom of the pop-up
4. A new screen pops up. At the bottom it says “System Variables”. Find “Path”, highlight it and then click “Edit”
5. From this screen you will press “New” and then type in the directory you install ffmpeg to.
   For me it was “c:\ffmpeg”.
   This now gives you access to that command from anywhere.
6. Close the windows and close/re-open any terminal windows

CONVERTING IMAGES TO VIDEO

1. Navigate to the directory that you have your photos
   Let’s assume they are named 01.png through 40.png
   (Bulk Renamer works good for formatting your file names)
2. Right click on the folder and choose “Open in Terminal”
3. From the terminal type:

ffmpeg -framerate 2 -pattern_type sequence -start_number 01 -i ‘%02d.png’ -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p out.mp4

That’s it! You’ll be shocked at how fast it goes.
But let’s break it down real quick:

framerate 2 >> this is how many frames (single images) to show per second. For high fluid movement like animation, than have hundreds or thousands of photos and set this high. For highlighting 20-40 set low.
I typically go 1 or 2.

start_number 01 >> this tells the encoded with which file to start. If you only wanted 30.png through 40.png you would change this to 30.

%02d.png >> this sets a pattern for the encoder to follow. In this case its looking for a two digit number (2d) which begins with a leading 0. If your files started with 001.png then you would change it to %03d. If the file was part of a group like {0755-1.png, 0756-1.png, 0757-1.png, etc..} then you would type %04d-1.png. You would change your start number to 0757

out.mp4 >> this is the file you will create. You change it to whatever you want.

Later, I’ll show you how to make a .bat file that will convert any video file by mere drag and drop.