Recursively compress mp4 files (actually ts) with ffmpeg in the same subfolder

Question

I have a root directory which haves a lot of folders, and inside those more folders. There are no real structure, just a bunch of folders with some having a mp4 file inside. I would like to compress them, as the mean size for those videos are around 200 Mb. Also, I would like to have them store in the same path as the original folder where the file is located.

Is there any way to solve this problem with ffmpeg?

Answer 1

I thought of a solution very similar to one answer, deleted from a community boot, which is therefore not visible to all users.

I don't think ffmpeg can do it all by itself. Better to use find to find the files and then call ffmpeg on them with the right parameters.

ffmpeg

You can use a codec that has better compression on its own, like libx265, and then choose to reduce the definition and/or the number of frames per second. The parameters to choose for ffmpeg is up to you, it will be something like this

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=1280:-2 -c:v libx265 -crf 30 output.mp4

Note on crf:

If you’re unsure about what CRF to use, begin with the default and change it according to your subjective impression of the output. Is the quality good enough? No? Then set a lower CRF. Is the file size too high? Choose a higher CRF. A change of ±6 should result in about half/double the file size, although your results might vary.

find

From the root directory which haves a lot of folder inside you can run find with the ffmpeg command line with your desired parameters.

find . -type f -name "*.mp4" -exec ffmpeg -i {} -vf scale=1280:-2 -c:v libx265 -crf 30 {}.newlycompressed.mp4 \;

Note:
you may want to run in advance another call to find to store the filenames to delete after you check it was all ok...

find . -type f -name "*.mp4" -exec echo "rm " {} \; >> Files_to_be_deleted