Short-form FFmpeg cookbook: copyable commands for Reels — guide skill for editing & clips

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Footage into a 9:16 MP4 with FFmpeg: crop to vertical, burn captions, trim and join, music under the voice.

• Type: Guide · Editing & clips
• Slug: short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook
• Status: live
• Publisher: varg (varg, verified)
• License: MIT
• Source: https://github.com/vargHQ/skills/tree/main/short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook
• Works in: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw
• Requires: ffmpeg + ffprobe, libass in the ffmpeg build (for burned captions)
• Cost: Free — runs locally, no varg API key
• Runtime: seconds per command

What it does

Copyable FFmpeg commands for short-form video: crop a 16:9 video to 1080×1920 (center, offset or over a blurred copy), burn in SRT or ASS captions or add soft subtitles, trim to the frame or losslessly, join matching or mismatched clips, and lay music under the voice with sidechain ducking. Every command was run on test media. When the agent has no shell, the same commands run on the varg ffmpeg tool, priced in credits.

Use when

• Cropping a horizontal video to 9:16 for Reels, TikTok or Shorts
• Burning SRT or ASS captions into a video
• Trimming clips and joining them into one MP4
• Adding background music that ducks under the voice

Not for

• Animated word-by-word captions (use a Remotion or HyperFrames caption skill)
• Choosing which editing service to use (use varg-video-editing)

Install

• Claude Code: claude plugin marketplace add vargHQ/skills && claude plugin install varg@varg
• Codex: npx skills add vargHQ/skills --skill short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook -a codex -y
• Cursor: npx skills add vargHQ/skills --skill short-form-ffmpeg-cookbook -a cursor -y

More editing & clips skills

• Splice AI clips into a video with FFmpeg: Splice generated clips into an original video with ffmpeg without A/V drift: absolute trims, one audio track.
• Chengfeng Videocut: Chinese talking-head editing: word-level transcript, five-pass flub sweep, human review in a Studio, subtitles, export.
• Claude Code Video Toolkit: Open-source video workspace for Claude Code: script, voice, music, visuals and Remotion render on your own GPU account.
• Herk Edit Kit: Nate Herk's kit to edit talking-head videos, reels and Shorts: silence and flub cuts, storytelling, motion graphics.
• Clipify: Long videos into social clips: find funny lines or impact beats, cut, reframe to 9:16, burn word-by-word captions.
• VectCut: Drives the VectCut editing API: talking-head cuts, remixes, e-commerce ads, subtitles, effects, cloud render