LinuxCommandLibrary

Video & Audio

Screenshots

Desktop-environment tools (gnome-screenshot, spectacle, flameshot) come with the desktop; scrot and maim work anywhere on X11, grim on Wayland.

$ flameshot gui

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$ gnome-screenshot

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$ spectacle

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$ scrot

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$ maim [fileName].png

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$ grim [fileName].png

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$ import -window root [fileName].png

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Screen Recording

Record the screen with ffmpeg on X11 or wf-recorder on Wayland. For terminal sessions, asciinema records text instead of pixels.

$ ffmpeg -f x11grab -i :0.0 recording.mp4

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$ wf-recorder -f recording.mp4

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$ recordmydesktop

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$ asciinema rec session.cast

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Webcam

Take a photo from the webcam.

$ fswebcam [fileName].jpg

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$ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -frames:v 1 [fileName].jpg

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$ uvccapture -d/dev/video0 -o[fileName].jpg

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Playing Audio & Video

mpv and vlc play virtually anything. ffplay is ffmpeg's bare-bones player; aplay and play handle simple sound files.

$ mpv [file]

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$ vlc [file]

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$ ffplay [file]

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$ aplay sound.wav

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$ play sound.wav

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Volume

alsamixer and pavucontrol are the interactive mixers. From scripts, pactl controls the PulseAudio/PipeWire default output.

$ alsamixer

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$ pavucontrol

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$ pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +5%

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$ pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle

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$ amixer set Master mute

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$ amixer set Master unmute

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Recording Audio

Record from the default microphone.

$ arecord -f cd [fileName].wav

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$ ffmpeg -f alsa -i default [fileName].wav

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Speech & Beep

Make the computer talk, or play the classic PC speaker beep.

$ spd-say "I am a robot"

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$ espeak "I am a robot"

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$ beep

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Inspect Media Files

Show codecs, resolution, duration, and bitrate.

$ ffprobe [file]

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$ mediainfo [file]

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Converting with ffmpeg

ffmpeg picks the output format from the file extension, so plain conversion needs no flags.

$ ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4

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$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.webm

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Extract the audio track as MP3 (-vn drops the video, -b:a sets the audio bitrate; -q:a 0 uses best variable quality instead).

$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -b:a 192k audio.mp3

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$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn -q:a 0 audio.mp3

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Resize a video; -1 keeps the aspect ratio.

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1280:-1 output.mp4

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Cutting Video

-ss sets the start, -t the duration. -c copy cuts without re-encoding: instant and lossless, but only accurate to the nearest keyframe.

$ ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30 -i input.mp4 -t 00:00:20 -c copy clip.mp4

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$ ffmpeg -ss 00:01:30 -i input.mp4 -t 00:00:20 clip.mp4

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Images & Video

Turn a numbered image sequence into a video and back, or make an animated GIF.

$ ffmpeg -framerate 24 -i image%d.jpg video.mp4

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$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 image%d.jpg

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$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf "fps=10,scale=480:-1" animation.gif

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Convert images to the WebP format.

$ gif2webp [inputFile] -o [outputFile]

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$ img2webp [inputFile] -o [outputFile]

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Kai