How to disable subtitles decoding in ffmpeg

When using FFmpeg to process video files, you can disable subtitle streams by specifying a particular option. FFmpeg offers various methods for handling subtitle streams, including copying subtitle streams, converting subtitle formats, or disabling subtitles.

To disable subtitle streams in FFmpeg, use the -sn parameter, which instructs FFmpeg to skip processing subtitle streams entirely. This ensures FFmpeg does not handle any subtitle streams during video processing.

Here is an example using the -sn parameter:

bash
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v copy -c:a copy -sn output.mp4

In this command:

• -i input.mp4 specifies the input file.
• -c:v copy and -c:a copy indicate that video and audio streams are copied without re-encoding.
• -sn instructs FFmpeg to ignore the subtitle stream of the input video.

After running this command, the output video file output.mp4 will not contain any subtitle data.

This method is highly useful when you need to quickly process video files without considering subtitle information, such as when creating previews or reducing file size.