Title: Separate or merge audio and video using ffmpeg
Author: Solène
Date: 20 December 2019
Tags: ffmpeg
Description: 

# Extract audio and video (separation)

If for some reasons you want to separate the audio and the video from a
file
you can use those commands:

    ffmpeg -i input_file.flv -vn -acodec copy audio.aac

    ffmpeg -i input_file.flv -an -vcodec copy video.mp4

Short explanation:

- `-vn` means `-video null` and so you discard video
- `-an` means `-audio null` and so you discard audio
- `codec copy` means the output is using original format from the file.
If the
  audio is mp3 then the output file will be a mp3 whatever the
extension you
  choose.

Instead of using codec copy you can choose a different codec for the
extracted
file, but copy is a good choice, it performs really fast because you
don't need
to re-encode it and is loss-less.

I use this to rework the audio with audacity.


# Merge audio and video into a single file (merge)

After you reworked tracks (audio and/or video) of your file, you can
combine
them into a single file.

    ffmpeg -i input_audio.aac -i input_video.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec
copy -f flv merged_video.flv