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Command-line syntax

Advanced mode

The command line is only needed in the FFmpeg command-line mode. In encoder mode the codec, the bit rate and the other parameters are plain settings, and no command line has to be written.

The command line is based on the FFmpeg configuration syntax, the FFmpeg documentation can be found here.

At the left part of the command line (input part), ffmpegLGPL.exe -i %PIPE% is required. This tells FFmpeg to take the Multipurpose Encoder output as input.

So the encoding settings that configure the video compression + audio compression + multiplexing are located after %PIPE%.

  • ffmpegLGPL.exe is the name of the LGPL build of FFmpeg included in the package and located in the installation folder of the filter. The filter replaces this name by its full path, so the command line does not have to give one. Another transcoder can be named instead: the filter looks for it at the path given, then in its own installation folder.
  • %PIPE% is mandatory for the transcoder to take the filter's output as input. It must be written exactly as is. It corresponds to the pipe generated by the filter and used as input by the transcoder. At runtime, %PIPE% is replaced by the real name of the pipe, generated automatically by the filter. With the (From File) filter, it is replaced by the path of the input file, so the same command line works with both filters.

Minimal example:

ffmpegLGPL.exe -i %PIPE% myclip.webm

See the Recording examples and the Streaming examples for complete command lines.

Reserved keywords destined to the filter itself (not to FFmpeg) can be specified before the command line, e.g.:

SHOWCONSOLE NOLOG ffmpegLGPL.exe -i %PIPE% myclip.webm

Tip

Feel free to contact us at contact@datastead.com if a command line is failing or not working properly!