FFmpeg Function

FFmpeg is a command line tool with a set of libraries in many dfferent formats for manipulating or prcessing multimedia data through encoding and decoding. The available FFmgeg functios only depend on the command line instruction.30Dec2019

Image-Image Functions

Image to image manipulation is one kind of simple functions available in FFmpeg

Image Compression

Digital picture data can be stored in a image file of different format. Each image format uses different kind of algorithm to pack the picture data in one single file. FFmmpeg image compression is the process used to further optimize the balance between image quality and file size according to the specifed requirement. The two types of methods used to compress a image are lossless and lossy compressions. Lossless image compression has no loss in quality but usually bigger file sizes. Lossy image compression has a loss in quality but usually smaller file sizes. Every file format has its own compression method. e.g. PNG format is an example of lossless compression, JPEG/JPG format is an example of lossy compression.
The optimization of image compression in FFmpeg can be controlled by specifying the corresponding switches accordingly. The switches used for image compression are -compression_level, -q:v etc. But for general purpose usage, image compression can be done by entering the input and output directly to FFmpeg and FFmpeg will automatically select the right decoder and encoder with the corresponding default value to process and optimize the input into the output. ffmpeg -i input output

Switch: -compression_level

to specify the level of compression required for the output with respect to the input.

Syntax

-compression_level integer

Arguments

integerValue ranges vary between encoders.

Remarks

For lossy, compression_level is a quality/speed trade off. Higher values give better quality for a given size at the cost of increased encoding time. For lossless, compression_level is a size/speed tradeoff. Higher values give smaller size at the cost of increased encoding time. More specifically, compression_level controls the number of extra algorithms and compression tools used, and varies the combination of these tools. But, the compressed ratio between the output and input only depends on the result of extra algorithms and compression tools used.
For WebP, value maps to the method option in libwebp. The valid range is 0 to 6. Default compression_level value is 4.
For PNG, the image format itself is supposed to be a lossless format. Compressed image quality is not dependent on compression ratio. The valid range of compression level is 0-100. Default compression_level value is 100 with highest output compression.
For JPEG/JPG, the compressed image quality is highly affected by compression ratio. The image quality controlled by -qscale has higher priority over level of compression controlled by -compression_level, and the default or specified -qscale/-q value will dominate the compression process. Default -qscale/-q value for JPEG/JPG is 6

Code Examples

Compress PNG Image

Example to compress a png image..

ffmpeg -hide_banner -i in\dt16001024.png -compression_level 100 out\cmplvl100.png

Command result

Compress JPG/JPEG Image

Example to compress a jpg/jpeg image is

ffmpeg -hide_banner -i in\dt16001024.jpg -compression_level 100 out\cmplvl100.jpg

Command result

Switch: -qscale or -q

to specify the fixed quality scale (VBR) required for the output.

Syntax

-q[:stream_specifier] float
-qscale[:stream_specifier] float

Arguments

:Separator stream_specifierOptional. If qscale is used without a stream_specifier then qscale applies only to the video stream.vto specify a video streamato specify an audio streamsto specify a subtitle stream floatValue ranges vary between encoders.

Remarks

Similarly, for lossy encoding, -qscale controls image quality, and for lossless encoding, -qscale controls the effort and time spent at compressing more.
For WebP, -qscale controls image quality on lossy encoding. The valid range is 0 to 100. Default value is 75.
Note that for usage via libavcodec, this option is called global_quality and must be multiplied by FF_QP2LAMBDA.
For JPEG/JPG, -qscale controls image quality. The valid range is 2 to 31. Lower value is higher quality value. Value 0 means lossless encoding. Value 1 is not recommended because of much larger file, little quality difference, and may causing problems on decoding and encoding. Default -qscale value is 6.
For PNG, the image format itself is supposed to be a lossless format. The level of compression controlled by -compression_level has higher priority over the image quality controlled by -qscale. The default or specified -compression_level value will dominate the compression process.

Code Examples

Compress PNG Image

Example to compress a png image..

ffmpeg -hide_banner -i in\dt16001024.png -qscale:v 6 out\qscale6.png

Command result

Compress JPG/JPEG Image

Example to compress a jpg/jpeg image is

ffmpeg -hide_banner -i in\dt16001024.jpg -qscale:v 6 out\qscale6.jpg

Command result

Source and Reference

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html
https://www.howtogeek.com/203979/is-the-png-format-lossless-since-it-has-a-compression-parameter/