Question

I’m using ffmpeg to get info about a video file and I don’t want to save the info into a file. ffmpeg is returning all the video info, but it’s returning as an error because I’m not specifying an output file. The command I’m using is:

ffmpeg -i C:\Test\3FA8D0E6-BD61-D160-98BB41304D63FAE3.mp4

The error I get is "At least one output file must be specified"

I’m calling this in ColdFusion using <cfexecute>, and the output is being stored in a local variable, which is why I don’t want to specify a file… I just don’t need to store this in a file.

If it makes any difference, I’m running this on Windows.

Answer 1

It’s giving an error because FFmpeg requires that an output file be specified. Using it just to get information about a file isn’t its intended use.

Option 1: Ignore the error. FFmpeg prints the file information first, so you can simply get the information you need and ignore the error.

Option 2: Use ffprobe instead. FFprobe is another tool usually packaged with FFmpeg that’s designed for getting information about media files. It can even output the information in a variety of easily parsed formats so you don’t have to mess around parsing FFmpeg’s output.