Video & Audio | Basic | Cheat sheet | Linux Command Library

Screenshots

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

$ flameshot gui

$ gnome-screenshot

$ spectacle

$ scrot

$ maim [fileName].png

$ grim [fileName].png

$ import -window root [fileName].png

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

$ wf-recorder -f recording.mp4

$ recordmydesktop

$ asciinema rec session.cast

Webcam

Take a photo from the webcam.

$ fswebcam [fileName].jpg

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

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

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]

$ vlc [file]

$ ffplay [file]

$ aplay sound.wav

$ play sound.wav

Volume

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

$ alsamixer

$ pavucontrol

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

$ pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle

$ amixer set Master mute

$ amixer set Master unmute

Recording Audio

Record from the default microphone.

$ arecord -f cd [fileName].wav

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

Speech & Beep

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

$ spd-say "I am a robot"

$ espeak "I am a robot"

$ beep

Inspect Media Files

Show codecs, resolution, duration, and bitrate.

$ ffprobe [file]

$ mediainfo [file]

Converting with ffmpeg

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

$ ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.webm

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

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

Resize a video; -1 keeps the aspect ratio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Convert images to the WebP format.

$ gif2webp [inputFile] -o [outputFile]

$ img2webp [inputFile] -o [outputFile]