ffmpeg running as a background task

Question

I am trying to get ffmpeg to run as a background task in linux, I have been trying to do it like this

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -loglevel panic output.mp4 &

But whenever I run the program it halts in the beginning until I put it as a foreground task fg $1 and then I can leave the task and it runs in the background just fine, how can I make it run from the beginning as a background task without having to put it as a foreground task temporarily? I have also tried this and it didn't work

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -loglevel panic output.mp4 2> /dev/null &

Colby Quinn · Answer 1 · 2021-03-18T16:08:21.983

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I just needed to supply some sort of input to ffmpeg so it would run, I just piped nothing into ffmpeg and it runs as a background task, done like so

echo "" | ffmpeg -i input.mkv -loglevel panic output.mp4 2> /dev/null &

Edit: This same effect can be done by adding -nostdin as a flag to ffmpeg, as demonstrated below

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -nostdin -loglevel panic output.mp4 2> /dev/null &

edited Mar 18 '21 at 16:08

answered Mar 18 '21 at 12:46

Colby Quinn

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See also [this answer here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/47114881/3266847). – Benjamin W. Mar 18 '21 at 13:44
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@BenjaminW. Thank you that solves the problem more elegantly. – Colby Quinn Mar 18 '21 at 16:06

ffmpeg running as a background task

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