How can I merge all the videos in a folder to make a single video file using FFMPEG

Using FFmpeg to merge all videos in a folder into a single video file, there are several methods, and I'll introduce one that is commonly used and practical.

First, ensure that FFmpeg is installed on your system. If not, download and install it from the FFmpeg official website.

Next, you'll need to use a command-line tool to perform the operation. Here are the steps and examples:

Step 1: Create a text file listing all video files

First, we need to create a text file listing the paths of all videos to be merged. This can be achieved by using the following command in the command line (assuming all video files are in the same folder with a .mp4 extension):

bash
for f in *.mp4; do echo "file '$f'" >> filelist.txt; done

This command iterates over all .mp4 files in the current directory and appends lines in the format 'file 'filename.mp4'' to the filelist.txt file.

Step 2: Merge videos using FFmpeg

Once you have the filelist.txt containing all video files, you can use the FFmpeg concat command to merge the videos:

bash
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i filelist.txt -c copy output.mp4

Here's the explanation of the command:

• -f concat: Specifies the concat protocol.
• -safe 0: Allows the use of absolute paths and unsafe filenames.
• -i filelist.txt: Specifies the input file list.
• -c copy: Uses the copy codec, meaning no re-encoding is performed, which preserves the original video quality and speeds up processing.
• output.mp4: Specifies the output file name.

Conclusion

After completing the above steps, output.mp4 will be the merged video file. This method is fast and preserves the original video quality. However, note that all video files should have the same encoding, resolution, and other parameters to avoid playback issues.