How to concatenate two MP4 files using FFmpeg?

Question

I\'m trying to concatenate two mp4 files using ffmpeg. I need this to be an automatic process hence why I chose ffmpeg. I\'m converting the two files into .ts files and th

Answer 1

A one-liner snippet that does not require an intermediate file:

ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i <(find "$PWD" -name '*.mp4' -printf "file '%p'\n" | sort) -c copy output.mp4

Here, the <() syntax actually creates a temporary file "in the background" so to say

Answer 2

After various tries below script worked for me on windows 10 powershell.

    $files=Get-ChildItem -path e:\ -Filter *.mp4


    $files| ForEach-Object  {"file '$($_.FullName)'"}| Out-File -FilePath e:\temp.txt -Encoding ASCII


    if (-not (test-path "e:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe")) {throw "e:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe needed"}

    E:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe -safe 0 -f concat -i "e:\temp.txt" -c copy -bsf:v hevc_mp4toannexb -an e:\joined.mp4

    # Conversion Cleanup
    Remove-Item e:\temp.txt

Here first two lines create a text file temp.txt which has following content

file 'e:\first.mp4'
file 'e:\second.mp4'

3rd, 4th lines checks if ffmpeg is available at path and create the "joined.mp4"

The key differences from other answers are as below

usage  of -bsf:v hevc_mp4toannexb -an

for my mp4 file above worked, you may need to use other alternatives like below depending on your video encoding.

h264_mp4toannexb

All such possible Bitstream filters can be found at https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-bitstream-filters.html

Answer 3

Here's a fast (takes less than 1 minute) and lossless way to do this without needing intermediate files:

ls Movie_Part_1.mp4 Movie_Part_2.mp4 | \
perl -ne 'print "file $_"' | \
ffmpeg -f concat -i - -c copy Movie_Joined.mp4

The "ls" contains the files to join The "perl" creates the concatenation file on-the-fly into a pipe The "-i -" part tells ffmpeg to read from the pipe

(note - my files had no spaces or weird stuff in them - you'll need appropriate shell-escaping if you want to do this idea with "hard" files).

Answer 4

Here 2 pure bash solutions using only ffmpeg and not using

• an intermediary file
• perl, python nor javascript

One-liner solution using ls

ls video1.mp4 video2.mp4 | while read line; do echo file \'$line\'; done | ffmpeg -protocol_whitelist file,pipe -f concat -i - -c copy output.mp4

Function which takes 0 or 2+ arguments

#######################################
# Merge mp4 files into one output mp4 file
# usage:
#   mergemp4 #merges all mp4 in current directory
#   mergemp4 video1.mp4 video2.mp4
#   mergemp4 video1.mp4 video2.mp4 [ video3.mp4 ...] output.mp4 
#######################################
function mergemp4() {
  if [ $# = 1 ]; then return; fi

  outputfile="output.mp4"

  #if no arguments we take all mp4 in current directory as array
  if [ $# = 0 ]; then inputfiles=($(ls -1v *.mp4)); fi
  if [ $# = 2 ]; then inputfiles=($1 $2); fi  
  if [ $# -ge 3 ]; then
    outputfile=${@: -1} # Get the last argument
    inputfiles=(${@:1:$# - 1}) # Get all arguments besides last one as array
  fi
  
  # -y: automatically overwrite output file if exists
  # -loglevel quiet: disable ffmpeg logs
  ffmpeg -y \
  -loglevel quiet \
  -f concat \
  -safe 0 \
  -i <(for f in $inputfiles; do echo "file '$PWD/$f'"; done) \
  -c copy $outputfile

  if test -f "$outputfile"; then echo "$outputfile created"; fi
}

Note: had tried some solutions in this thread and none satisfied me