FFMPEG & YT-DLP
00 Bench manual · built

Two commandsrun the internet's video.

Every option in ffmpeg(1), every flag in yt-dlp, the complete component inventory pulled from FFmpeg's own source tree, and a practice engine to make it stick. Nothing here is transcribed from memory — the tables below are parsed from the manual page and the upstream README, and every external link was retrieved, not recalled.

01 Command dissector
Paste any ffmpeg or yt-dlp command
02 Setup

Getting both tools running

Install once, then check versions before you ever debug anything else.

Termux specifics. Run termux-setup-storage once and work through ~/storage/shared rather than raw /sdcard paths — Android's scoped storage breaks direct writes on most modern devices. The Termux ffmpeg build is software-only, so plan for CPU-bound encodes and thermal throttling.
03 Part one

FFmpeg

A graph runner that happens to convert video. Learn the pipeline and the flags stop being arbitrary.

04 Reference

Complete FFmpeg inventory

CLI options parsed from the ffmpeg(1) manual page you supplied. Private options — -crf, -preset, -b:v, -movflags and the rest of the everyday flags that belong to a specific encoder or muxer rather than to ffmpeg itself — are hand-written, because they appear in no part of ffmpeg(1). Filters, codecs, muxers, demuxers, protocols and bitstream filters extracted from FFmpeg's own source registries. Click any row to expand.

The manual page you supplied documents the ffmpeg program itself. Per-filter and per-codec options live in separate manuals — for any component below, run ffmpeg -h filter=NAME, ffmpeg -h encoder=NAME or ffmpeg -h muxer=NAME locally for the authoritative parameter list in your build, which is what actually matters.

05 Scenarios

Recipes

Task-shaped, not flag-shaped. Filter by tag.

06 Part two

yt-dlp

An extractor framework with a downloader attached. The format selection language is the part that repays study.

07 Reference

Complete yt-dlp option list

Parsed from the upstream README, including documented aliases. Click any row to expand.

08 Together
09 Failure modes

Gotchas that cost people hours

Each of these produces an error message that points somewhere other than the cause.

10 Tools

Bitrate and size calculator

Work backwards from a size budget, or forwards from a bitrate.

11 Practice

Flashcards

Click the card or press Space to flip. Rate yourself and missed cards come back sooner.

12 Assessment

Quiz and exam

Twenty questions drawn at random from a bank of . Quiz mode gives immediate feedback; exam mode is timed, silent until you submit, and needs 70% to pass.

13 Trivia

Fun facts

    14 Elsewhere

    External resources

    Every link below points at its original source. Nothing is mirrored or copied here.

    arvindersingh.me