Creating Videos from Photos Using FFmpeg

Introduction

In multimedia processing, the need often arises to convert a collection of photos into a cohesive video. This can be useful for creating slideshows, time-lapse videos, or simply merging a series of images into a single video file. FFmpeg, a powerful multimedia framework, provides a convenient command-line interface to achieve this task.

In this blog post, we’ll explore few examples of using FFmpeg to create videos from photos — one resulting in a WebM video and the other in an MP4/MKV video.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, ensure you have FFmpeg installed on your system. You can install it using your package manager. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Creating a WebM Video

To create a WebM video from a series of JPEG images, use the following FFmpeg command:

ffmpeg -framerate 1/3 -pattern_type glob -i ‘files*.jpeg’ -c:v libvpx -crf 10 -b:v 1M -c:a libvorbis output.webm

Let’s break down the command:

• -framerate 1/3: Specifies the frame rate of the output video. In this case, one frame every three seconds.
• -pattern_type glob -i ‘files*.jpeg’: Uses a glob pattern to match all JPEG files starting with “files” in the current directory.
• -c:v libvpx: Chooses the libvpx codec for video…