FFmpeg is “unable to find a suitable output format for '–i'”

Question

I'm trying to do a simple conversion using the following arguments from Fabio Sonnati's blog.

ffmpeg –i source.MOV –r 15 –s 320×240 –an video.flv

Getting this error

Unable to find a suitable output format for '–i'

Answer 1

The culprit lies in the blog post itself. The author used the en-dash instead of the hypen-minus (–, not -), so FFmpeg will choke on that and not recognize i as the input option.

Moreover, the author used the multiplication sign instead of a latin x for the size (×, not x).

To fix this, replace the command with:

ffmpeg -i source.MOV -r 15 -s 320x240 -an video.flv

And go write the author a mail that they should fix their examples.