Fun With FFMPEG Automation

January 17, 2025 at 8:28AM

Was finally able to finish a script to handle running convert videos into gif files. My use case is pretty much for use on the web. The key to making it work was using FFmpeg to handle the conversion and setting the Automator action Pass input selection to As Arguments. Similar to this other post doing handbrake automation.

Spoiler

Feel free to cheat and download a previously created top four quick actions. Just to make things even easier I added an additional file with all the variations I used to test in the table below. download here

Once it is added right-click on the video in Finder to run the action and skip the creation steps below.

> 320p4Hi (602.2k) vs 640p7Low (885.1k)

> 640p3Hi (1.4mb) vs 1280p4Hi (2mb)

Build You Own

Tools

FFmpeg (installed w/ brew install ffmpeg)
Automator.app

Steps

FFmpeg): Install using brew install ffmpeg

Automator.app: Create a new quick action.
- Add single Run Shell Script item.

Automator.app: Update the Run Shell Script with the following script and save.



#!/bin/bash
source ~/.bash_profile

# Requires FFmpeg use `brew install ffmpeg` verify with `ffmpeg --version`
# helpful commands from. https://creatomate.com/blog/how-to-make-a-gif-from-a-video-using-ffmpeg

for file in "$@";
 do
  #echo "Processing file: $file"

	base_name=$(basename "$file" .${file##*.}) # Strip file extension
  
	output_dir=$(dirname "$file")
	output="${output_dir}/${base_name%.*}_320p4.gif"

	#ffmpeg -i $file $output  #Dumbest Larget File  ✓ (Test: 2.5 -> 16mb)

	### 320
	ffmpeg -i $file -vf "fps=4, scale=320:-1[s]; [s]split[a][b]; [a]palettegen[palette]; [b][palette]paletteuse" $output # ✓ (Test: 2.5 -> 602k)

done

Once its all setup you can access the Quick Action using the finder right-click menu.

Data Bonus

I had so much fun testing various configurations I decided to put together a little table of what I found. Click here to download this 2.5mb original video I used in my testing.

I used a few variation of the commands.

ffmpeg -i $file -filter_complex "fps=10, scale=720:-1" $output

ffmpeg -i $file -vf "fps=4, scale=480:-1[s]; [s]split[a][b]; [a]palettegen[palette]; [b][palette]paletteuse" $output

ffmpeg -i $file -vf "fps=7,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos" $output

ffmpeg -i $file -filter_complex "fps=3,scale=640:-1[s]; [s]split[a][b]; [a]palettegen[palette]; [b][palette]paletteuse" $output

Scale	FPS	Encode Type	Output Size
Default	-	- -	16mb
320	10	paletteuse	794k
320	4	paletteuse	602k
480	10	- -	653k
480	3	paletteuse	886k
480	4	paletteuse	1.2mb
480	8	paletteuse	2.2mb
480	10	paletteuse	2.6mb
640	10	- -	658k
640	7	lanczos	885k
640	3	paletteuse	1.4mb
640	10	lanczos	1.1mb
640	10	paletteuse	2.5mb
640	8	paletteuse	3.6mb
720	3	paletteuse	1.7mb
720	7	- -	1.1mb
720	10	- -	1.4mb
720	10	paletteuse	5.4mb
1080	3	- -	1.2mb
1080	4	- -	1.5mb
1080	2	paletteuse	2.4mb
1080	10	- -	2.9mb
1080	3	paletteuse	3.3mb
1080	8	paletteuse	4.7mb
1080	4	paletteuse	4.6mb
1280	4	lanczos	2.0mb
1280	2	paletteuse	3.1mb
1280	3	paletteuse	4.3mb

Happy Coding ;-)

Helpful References

creatomate.com post