Edit Video Title and Author Metadata with ffmpeg
Fix a video's title, artist and comment tags in seconds by remuxing with -metadata and -c copy — no re-encoding.
01Command
$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -metadata title="My Video Title" -metadata artist="Me" -c copy output.mp402What it does
Media servers and phone galleries sort and display videos by their embedded metadata, and a wrong title tag makes a library look messy. ffmpeg's -metadata key=value option writes new tag values into the output file, and combining it with -c copy means every video and audio stream is copied untouched — the whole operation takes seconds even for a multi-gigabyte file because nothing is re-encoded.
03Risk
04Undo
✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.
05Sources
- Metadata - FFmpeg wikiEvidence: The wiki explains writing metadata (title, artist, etc.) into output files with the -metadata option.
- FFmpeg DocumentationEvidence: FFmpeg documents the -metadata key=value option for setting metadata in output files and -c copy for stream copy without re-encoding.
Last verified: 2026-09-19 · Category: Media
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