The Linux Page

How to remove the ffmpeg / ffprobe "stupid" banner!?

Removing the ffmpeg & ffprobe annoying banner permanently.

In some of my work, I use ffmpeg to compress/decompress video and audio files.

My big problem with the ffmpeg and ffprobe tools is the incredibly annoying banner that they print and covers most of my console output. It's not only useless, but it makes it really hard to very quickly see the standard output of the command. (if only they were to put a line of dash or something to separate that section with the next...)

Under Linux, there is actually a really easy way to prevent that stupid banner from appearing all the time. It's by using the alias command.

First, the command line option one can use to hide that banner goes like this:

ffmpeg -hide_banner ...
ffprobe -hide_banner ...

And that's exactly what we can put in our alias and then we don't have to enter that option. It will be there by default.

alias ffmpeg="ffmpeg -hide_banner"
alias ffprobe="ffprobe -hide_banner"

Voilà!

Now, when I use ffmpeg and ffprobe I don't get that banner anymore. Much easier to use these tools! Obviously, they should change that default to hidden in their tools and show the banner on request, as when you enter -banner. Not the other way around.

As for your aliases, you can enter them in your ~/.bash_aliases script so that way it will be there even after a reboot.

Re: How to remove the ffmpeg / ffprobe "stupid" banner!? (PWSH)

This equivalent achieves the same functionality on both Powershell and Windows Powershell (Which are, maddeningly, not the same program)

1) Use the following command to edit your Powershell profile:
notepad.exe $PROFILE

2) Add the following to the document, save it, and re-launch Powershell:

Function RunFfprobe {param([string]$InputFile,[string[]]$AdditionalArgs) & "$(where.exe ffprobe.exe)" -hide_banner -i $InputFile @AdditionalArgs}
Set-Alias -Name ffprobe -Value RunFfprobe

Function RunFfmpeg {param([string]$InputFile, [string[]]$AdditionalArgs) & "$(where.exe ffmpeg.exe)" -hide_banner -i $InputFile @AdditionalArgs}
Set-Alias -Name ffmpeg -Value RunFfmpeg