FFmpeg media finishing

Use this skill at the finishing stage: after creative generation or editing has produced source media and before the user receives deliverables. Your job is to turn fragile, inconsistent media outputs into reproducible, spec-aware files with an audit trail.

This skill is provider-independent. It assumes local ffmpeg and ffprobe are available, but not that every codec, filter, hardware encoder, or subtitle renderer is compiled into the installed build. FFmpeg build capabilities, encoder names, platform upload rules, and social specs are volatile; re-check them at production time with the commands below and with the current delivery spec.

Operating rule

Do not guess the state of media. Probe first, decide, run deterministic commands, then probe outputs.

Every finishing handoff should include:

• input audit summary from ffprobe;
• chosen delivery spec and any unresolved assumptions;
• exact commands run, including FFmpeg version/build;
• output audit summary;
• checksums and, when useful, frame hashes;
• known risks such as re-encoded captions, color metadata ambiguity, clipping, lossy transcodes, or platform-specific uncertainty.