Merge two video clips into one, placing them next to each other

Question

I have two video clips. Both are 640x480 and last 10 minutes. One contains background audio, the other one a singing actor. I would like to create a single 10 minute video clip measuring 1280x480 (in other words, I want to place the videos next to each other and play them simultaneously, mixing audio from both clips). I've tried trying to figure out how to do this with ffmpeg/avidemux, but so far I came up empty. They all refer to concatenating when I search for merging.

Any recommendations?

This answer is great, because it provides not only side-by-side examples but also more advanced grid layouts. https://stackoverflow.com/a/33764934/1576548 — Raleigh L., Jul 24 '23 at 05:23

score 124 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 11 '18 at 14:57

124

To be honest, using the accepted answer resulted in a lot of dropped frames for me.

However, using the hstack filter_complex produced perfectly fluid output:

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex hstack output.mp4

answered Apr 11 '18 at 14:57

Albus Dumbledore

1,341

27

In case anyone is wondering how to stack more than 2 videos, you can simply specify hstack=inputs=3 – Simbi Jun 17 '20 at 18:34
1

What to do when they're of different size? I got "Input 1 height 1080 does not match input 0 height 800" error. – trinity420 Jun 17 '23 at 23:08
And vstack will stack inputs vertically btw. – Alexander Vasiljev Feb 13 '24 at 04:15

score 75 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 19 '21 at 15:11

75

ffmpeg \
  -i input1.mp4 \
  -i input2.mp4 \
  -filter_complex '[0:v]pad=iw*2:ih[int];[int][1:v]overlay=W/2:0[vid]' \
  -map '[vid]' \
  -c:v libx264 \
  -crf 23 \
  -preset veryfast \
  output.mp4

This essentially doubles the size of input1.mp4 by padding the right side with black the same size as the original video, and then places input2.mp4 over the top of that black area with the overlay filter.

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/153160/join-videos-split-screen

edited Apr 19 '21 at 15:11

Richard Barber

121

answered Oct 04 '15 at 12:10

Jan

7,772
2
35
41

1

What does -map [vid] do? – 0xcaff Dec 23 '16 at 04:12
@caffinatedmonkey [vid] is a so-called linklabel, which is a defined output link label in the filter graph (the line above with the filter_complex). It maps the output from the complex filter graph to the output file. – Jan Dec 26 '16 at 12:34
I'm getting Unrecognized option 'crf'. Error splitting the argument list: Option not found. If I remove cr then unrecognized option 'preset' – R S Mar 10 '18 at 17:03
Getting no such filter – user1767754 Jul 15 '19 at 08:17
2

[vid] not in quotes doesn't work. --> -map "[vid]" \ – The Nomadic Coder Dec 12 '19 at 12:02
1

This works like a charm but a bit more explanation would be helpful. – Patryk Mar 02 '20 at 13:33
I got Padded dimensions cannot be smaller than input dimensions. – alexis Mar 09 '22 at 18:58
What is the benefit of your approach versus using the HStack filter? – Raleigh L. Jun 05 '22 at 05:53
This visually works, but I lost all audio. – 2540625 Mar 22 '24 at 00:34

llogan · Answer 3 · 2015-10-14T06:49:38.283

36

This can be done with just two filters and the audio from both inputs will also be included.

ffmpeg -i left.mp4 -i right.mp4 -filter_complex \
"[0:v][1:v]hstack=inputs=2[v]; \
 [0:a][1:a]amerge[a]" \
-map "[v]" -map "[a]" -ac 2 output.mp4

hstack will place each video side-by-side.
amerge will combine the audio from both inputs into a single, multichannel audio stream, and -ac 2 will make it stereo; without this option the audio stream may end up as 4 channels if both inputs are stereo.

edited Oct 14 '15 at 06:49

answered Oct 07 '15 at 21:36

llogan

1,012

Hello, Can I overlay one video on to another video? – Nisarg Sep 21 '16 at 11:38
@Nisarg Use the overlay filter. – llogan Sep 21 '16 at 22:25
I want upper video little transparent so one can see whats happening in background, Can you help me out with that? – Nisarg Sep 22 '16 at 05:01
Hello Sir, Can you care to look this out. – Nisarg Sep 22 '16 at 06:34
3

I lost audio with the accepted answer. This one works perfectly. – Matt Hough Feb 22 '19 at 08:48
hstack has the limitation that it requires constant resolution, which live videos streamed by Chrome (e.g. with WebRTC) won't have, because Chrome changes resolution dynamically depending on the available bandwidth. Then hstack fails. So best of both worlds, use the accepted answer for the video part, and this answer for the audio! – j1elo Sep 02 '21 at 11:00
@j1elo how would that command be? – Zee Sep 05 '21 at 13:04

score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 15 '22 at 10:53

8

ffmpeg -y -ss 0 -t 5 -i inputVideo1.mp4  
-ss 0 -t 5 -i inputVideo2.mp4  
-i BgPaddingImage.jpg  
-filter_complex "nullsrc=size=720*720[base];[base][2:v]overlay=1,format=yuv420p[base1];[0:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,scale=345*700[upperleft];[1:v]setpts=PTS-STARTPTS,scale=345*700[upperright];[base1][upperleft]overlay=shortest=1:x=10:y=10[tmp1];[tmp1][upperright]overlay=shortest=1:x=366:y=10"  
-c:a copy -strict experimental  
-ss 0 -t 5 -preset ultrafast -an 
output.mp4

Add Two Video Side by side And Also Add OverLay Image That Show On Videos Padding With You can change Background Image [BgPaddingImage.jpg] here set your bg image path.

Show This below Video its create from Above command

edited Jul 15 '22 at 10:53

Camille Goudeseune

365

answered May 30 '19 at 04:23

Sanjay Hadiya

187

1

What language is this? How do you run it? – muru May 30 '19 at 04:41
@muru Check it out now its FFMPEG Command ?? :) – Sanjay Hadiya May 30 '19 at 05:04
2

@Sanjay Usually characters like [ and * would have to be escaped before the command could be understood by a shell. I think that is part of the confusion. What shell are you using? – Metamorphic Apr 22 '20 at 06:41
bro i was run on android ffmpeg – Sanjay Hadiya Apr 23 '20 at 16:54

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 11 '21 at 08:44

Gradle Dependency

implementation "com.writingminds:FFmpegAndroid:0.3.2"

Code

Command to concate two videos side by side into one

val cmd : arrayOf("-y", "-i", videoFile!!.path, "-i", videoFileTwo!!.path, "-filter_complex", "hstack", outputFile.path)

Command to append two videos (one after another) into one

  val cmd : arrayOf("-y", "-i", videoFile!!.path, "-i", videoFileTwo!!.path, "-strict", "experimental", "-filter_complex",
                        "[0:v]scale=iw*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih):ih*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih), pad=1920:1080:(1920-iw*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih))/2:(1080-ih*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih))/2,setsar=1:1[v0];[1:v] scale=iw*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih):ih*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih), pad=1920:1080:(1920-iw*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih))/2:(1080-ih*min(1920/iw\\,1080/ih))/2,setsar=1:1[v1];[v0][0:a][v1][1:a] concat=n=2:v=1:a=1",
                        "-ab", "48000", "-ac", "2", "-ar", "22050", "-s", "1920x1080", "-vcodec", "libx264", "-crf", "27",
                        "-q", "4", "-preset", "ultrafast", outputFile.path)

Note :

"videoFile" is your first video path.
"videoFileTwo" is your second video path.
"outputFile" is your combined video path which is our final output path

To create output path of video

fun createVideoPath(context: Context): File {
        val timeStamp: String = SimpleDateFormat(Constant.DATE_FORMAT, Locale.getDefault()).format(Date())
        val imageFileName: String = "APP_NAME_"+ timeStamp + "_"
        val storageDir: File? = context.getExternalFilesDir(Environment.DIRECTORY_MOVIES)
        if (storageDir != null) {
            if (!storageDir.exists()) storageDir.mkdirs()
        }
        return File.createTempFile(imageFileName, Constant.VIDEO_FORMAT, storageDir)
    }

Code to execute command

try {
            FFmpeg.getInstance(context).execute(cmd, object : ExecuteBinaryResponseHandler() {
                override fun onStart() {
            }

            override fun onProgress(message: String?) {
                callback!!.onProgress(message!!)
            }

            override fun onSuccess(message: String?) {
                callback!!.onSuccess(outputFile)
            }

            override fun onFailure(message: String?) {
                if (outputFile.exists()) {
                    outputFile.delete()
                }
                callback!!.onFailure(IOException(message))
            }

            override fun onFinish() {
                callback!!.onFinish()
            }
        })
    } catch (e: Exception) {

    } catch (e2: FFmpegCommandAlreadyRunningException) {

    }

Welcome to the site, and thank you for your contribution. Please edit your post to indicate which language you used for the proposed code, and ideally a command-line example on how to apply it to the OPs problem. — AdminBee, Nov 11 '21 at 09:38

Merge two video clips into one, placing them next to each other

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