FFmpeg Fundamentals (2025)

Foundational FFmpeg knowledge for 7.1 LTS and 8.0.1. This SKILL is a lean orchestrator; detailed recipes and tables live under references/.

When to Use This Skill

Use for foundational FFmpeg operations:

• First-time FFmpeg users needing syntax help
• Basic transcoding between formats (MP4, WebM, MKV, MOV)
• Understanding codec options and quality settings
• Simple filter operations (scale, crop, rotate)
• File analysis with ffprobe

For specialized topics see related skills: hardware encoding -> ffmpeg-hardware-acceleration, streaming -> ffmpeg-streaming, Docker -> ffmpeg-docker-containers, advanced filter graphs -> ffmpeg-filter-complex-patterns.

Quick Reference