Using a parameter file for filter option of libav (or ffmpeg)

Question

Good time of the day,

I have heard that such a feature exists, but i've lost the reference and have been unable to find it now. I am looking for a way to use the file as the input for all the fileter options passed to libav's avconv (or ffmpeg).

I know i can do that via a command line with -f or -vf, but there are two problems: i often reuse the same settings and sometimes i need to reuse the particular approach after bash has already lost that particular command line from history.

If i'm mistaken and there's no way to do that, also kindly let me know.

Answer 1

You can use the -filter_script option:

$ ffmpeg -i input -filter_script filtering -codec:a copy output.mkv

In this example, filtering is a file with the filtergraph.

$ cat filtering 
scale=640:-1,negate

I believe this only works for simple filtergrahps that contain exactly one input and one output.

Libav stuff (avconv and their fake, so-called "ffmpeg" version) is buggy. You can simply download a recent Linux build of ffmpeg from FFmpeg or follow a step-by-step guide to compile ffmpeg.