How can I make ffmpeg be quieter/less verbose?

By default ffmpeg sends a whole lot of messages to stderr: when built, how it was built, codecs, etc, etc, etc.

How can I make it quieter?

I've tried -v 0 (and -v 10 since the documentation just coyly says Set the logging verbosity level. with no indication of what the range of inputs is) -- still not quiet.

I've tried -loglevel quiet -- still not quiet.

I should mention, I'm looking for "quieter," not "no output ever". If there's an error I want to see it, but I don't need to hear about ffmpeg's configuration every. single. time.

Solution 1:

ffmpeg -hide_banner -loglevel error

This is alluded to in a comment below the current answer.

The option -hide_banner was introduced in late 2013 -- https://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2013-December/152349.html )

-loglevel warning leads to more verbose output as it shows all warning messages

-loglevel panic is the least verbose output (omitting even error messages) but is undocumented.

Solution 2:

I haven't tested it out, but I see an option in the man page to do:

ffmpeg -loglevel panic [rest of your ffmpeg stuff]

Should make it so only serious errors are logged, in theory

Solution 3:

Here you have loglevels from the source code (FFmpeg version 0.10.2.git)

const struct { const char *name; int level; } log_levels[] = {
        { "quiet"  , AV_LOG_QUIET   },
        { "panic"  , AV_LOG_PANIC   },
        { "fatal"  , AV_LOG_FATAL   },
        { "error"  , AV_LOG_ERROR   },
        { "warning", AV_LOG_WARNING },
        { "info"   , AV_LOG_INFO    },
        { "verbose", AV_LOG_VERBOSE },
        { "debug"  , AV_LOG_DEBUG   },
    };

Solution 4:

I have used with success the following (newest FFMPEG Version at time of writing):

-nostats -loglevel 0

Then it is absolutely quiet in my usage scenario.