Change the frame rate of an MP4 video with ffmpeg

.mp4ffmpegvideo

I have a video in mp4 format with a frame rate of .33 (1 frame for 3 seconds). I want to increase the frame rate to 5 frames/sec. I have tried the below command but it does not do any thing:

ffmpeg -i <input.mp4> -r 5 <output.mp4>

Any idea why ffmpeg is ignoring -r option?

Best Answer

I know this is an old question but none of the current answers are the recommended way anymore.

Lossless (video) remuxing

As noted in the comments there is a way to do this where the video does not have to be re-encoded. It requires remuxing the file to a different containter format MKV and then remuxing it back into an MP4. Here is an example that changes a video to 12 frames/second:

mkvmerge --default-duration 0:12fps --fix-bitstream-timing-information 0 original-video.mp4 -o temp-video.mkv
ffmpeg -i temp-video.mkv -c:v copy slow-video.mp4

If the video contains audio you can also slow that down without changing the pitch, but it is not a lossless conversion. The example below assumes the source video was 24 frames/second so that audio needed to be slowed to half (0.5) speed using ffmpeg's atempo filter.

mkvmerge --default-duration 0:12fps --fix-bitstream-timing-information 0 original-video.mp4 -o temp-video.mkv
ffmpeg -i temp-video.mkv -c:v copy -c:a aac -filter:a "atempo=0.5" slow-video-with-audio.mp4

FFMPEG Wiki Guidance

This is the guidance from the ffmpeg wiki. Note that all of these options do require re-encoding the video.

Speeding up/slowing down video

You can change the speed of a video stream using the setpts video filter. Note that in the following examples, the audio stream is not changed, so it should ideally be disabled with -an.

To double the speed of the video, you can use:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:v "setpts=0.5*PTS" output.mkv

The filter works by changing the presentation timestamp (PTS) of each video frame. For example, if there are two succesive frames shown at timestamps 1 and 2, and you want to speed up the video, those timestamps need to become 0.5 and 1, respectively. Thus, we have to multiply them by 0.5.

Note that this method will drop frames to achieve the desired speed. You can avoid dropped frames by specifying a higher output frame rate than the input. For example, to go from an input of 4 FPS to one that is sped up to 4x that (16 FPS):

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -r 16 -filter:v "setpts=0.25*PTS" output.mkv

To slow down your video, you have to use a multiplier greater than 1:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:v "setpts=2.0*PTS" output.mkv

Smooth

You can smooth out slow/fast video with the minterpolate video filter. This is also known as "motion interpolation" or "optical flow".

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter "minterpolate='mi_mode=mci:mc_mode=aobmc:vsbmc=1:fps=120'" output.mkv

Other options include slowmoVideo and Butterflow. Speeding up/slowing down audio

You can speed up or slow down audio with the atempo audio filter. To double the speed of audio:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:a "atempo=2.0" -vn output.mkv

The atempo filter is limited to using values between 0.5 and 2.0 (so it can slow it down to no less than half the original speed, and speed up to no more than double the input). If you need to, you can get around this limitation by stringing multiple atempo filters together. The following with quadruple the audio speed:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter:a "atempo=2.0,atempo=2.0" -vn output.mkv

Using a complex filtergraph, you can speed up video and audio at the same time:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -filter_complex "[0:v]setpts=0.5*PTS[v];[0:a]atempo=2.0[a]" -map "[v]" -map "[a]" output.mkv

Related Solutions

How to convert .avi video that has 1 static image in the video (with sound) to mp4 video with ffmpeg to least possible size

You should check if the video-part is really a factor by separating the A/V-components

with ffmpeg this works with

#retrieve audio-only
ffmpeg -i <<VideoName>> -vn -acodec copy -f <<AudioCodec>> output.audio
#retrieve video-only
ffmpeg -i <<VideoName>> -an -vcodec copy -f <<VideoCodec>> output.video

If the video is really significant in size, one possibility would be to create a screenshot of it, and use the image as input for the video-coder, instead of recoding the videostream

see ffmpeg.org/wiki for reference

#create screenshot from video
ffmpeg -i <<VideoName>> -ss 00:00:01.0 -f image2 -vframes 1 output.screen.png

You can see on this stackoverflow-post how to make a video from a still

Problems with frame rate on video conversion using ffmpeg with libx264

The problem is that ffmpeg chooses the default for -vsync based on the output muxer. Its mp4 muxer defaults to vsync 1, but it chooses a very high framerate so that it can put a frame at the exact right time for every input frame.

(The input frame timing isn't constant. It averages 14.97 fps, according to ffmpeg. Probably from a phone camera? They do variable FPS. I think they slow down to get more light for each frame, but it might be another reason.)

So ffmpeg will duplicate frames up to the 30k fps that it's chosen, or something. h.264 is pretty efficient at storing duplicate frames, but that's ridiculous.

Anyway, the solution is to use -vsync 2 on your ffmpeg command line. Or output to mkv, and then remux to mp4, but the reason that works is that mkv defaults to -vsync 2. It's really that simple. You don't need to make your output CFR. Youtube handles arbitrary frame rates just fine, as long as they're <= 60, and so do most other players. I assume phones are fine, since they make variable FPS videos in the first place. You don't need to use -r something to force frame duplication to hit exactly 30fps or anything.