ffzip

Small FFmpeg command-line tools for inspecting media and producing compact H.264 MP4 files.

• ffp prints a compact ffprobe summary, one line per stream.
• ffzip resizes and reencodes videos. It can process multiple files and glob patterns.

Requirements

• FFmpeg provides ffmpeg and ffprobe.
• uv runs the scripts and installs Python 3.14 when needed.

Install

Clone the repository wherever you want to keep it, then create symlinks in ~/.local/bin that point back to that clone:

git clone https://github.com/LocalT0aster/ffzip.git ~/src/ffzip
cd ~/src/ffzip

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -sfn "$PWD/ffzip" ~/.local/bin/ffzip
ln -sfn "$PWD/ffp" ~/.local/bin/ffp

Ensure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH, then verify the installation:

ffzip --help
ffp --help

If you move the clone, enter its new directory and rerun the two ln -sfn commands. The symlinks will point at the new location without reinstalling anything.

Usage

Inspect one or more media files:

ffp video.webm
ffp "**/*.mp4"

Convert files with the default 720px shorter-side cap:

ffzip input.webm
ffzip first.webm second.webm
ffzip "**/*.webm"

Use -o only when converting one input to a custom output path:

ffzip input.webm -o converted.mp4

Useful ffzip options:

ffzip input.webm -s 480          # Cap the shorter side at 480px.
ffzip input.webm -r 30000/1001  # Set the output frame rate.
ffzip input.webm -b 1M          # Use a 1 Mbit/s video bitrate.
ffzip input.webm --crf 23       # Use x264 CRF quality mode.
ffzip input.webm -k             # Keep the declared source video bitrate.

-b, --crf, and -k are mutually exclusive. Default filenames describe the selected codec, size, frame rate, and explicit quality option, for example input_h264_720p_30fps_1M.mp4.