FFmpeg Skill

Natural language FFmpeg operations with opinionated best practices for speed, reliability, and quality.

Core Principles

1. Stream copy by default - When converting video containers, use -c copy to avoid re-encoding (10x faster, no quality loss)
2. CPU-only encoding - No GPU encoders (more reliable, hardware-agnostic)
3. Fast presets - Default to fast preset for x264/x265 (good balance of speed/quality)
4. Context-aware audio - Ask about transcription when converting to MP3 (Whisper prefers 16kHz mono)

Common Operations

Audio Extraction

When extracting audio from video: