Videos are stored in containers. Containers that we officially support are MP4, TS, AVI, MKV, MOV, MPG. The way that the audio and video can be stored within the container can vary and not every codec will always be supported. The codecs which we currently support for video are h264, mpeg-4, VP8, VP9, mpeg1video, mpeg2video, msvideo1. The codecs we currently support for audio are AAC, MP1, MP2, MP3 and PCM. If your video file is not playing with Sighthound products, it is possible that the audio codec is incompatible. If this is the case, you may be able to solve this problem by removing the audio.
Method 1: ffmpeg
The simplest way to remove an audio track from a video would be to use ffmpeg.
On Windows you can download ffmpeg here. Once you download the zip file, you will need to extract the file either to your Downloads folder or to another location if you prefer.
The next step is to open the command prompt. To do this, open the menu and type "cmd" and press enter.
In the window that appears, you will want to navigate to the folder which contains the video.
If this is your Downloads folder, the command will be: cd Downloads
Once you are in your Downloads folder, you are ready to strip the audio from your video files. The command you need to do this is "ffmpeg.exe" -i "inputfile.mp4" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "outputfile.mp4"
Note that this will work with other file formats as well, mp4 is used as an example. If the ffmpeg.exe which you downloaded is in another location than your Downloads folder, you would replace "ffmpeg.exe" with the path to ffmpeg.exe which may be something like "C:\Users\<your username>\Documents\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe"
This command will create a new video file "outputfile.mp4" which is the same video as "inputfile.mp4" without the audio.
On MacOS, you can download ffmpeg here. Once you download the zip file, you will need to extract the file either to your Downloads folder or to another location if you prefer. You can also install ffmpeg using brew if that is your preference.
The next step is to open the command prompt. To do this, press "Command+Space" and then type "terminal" to launch terminal.app.
In the window that appears, you will want to navigate to the folder which contains the video.
If this is your Downloads folder, the command will be: cd Downloads
Once you are in your Downloads folder, you are ready to strip the audio from your video files. The command you need to do this is "./ffmpeg" -i "inputfile.mp4" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "outputfile.mp4"
Note that this will work with other file formats as well, mp4 is used as an example. If the ffmpeg.exe which you downloaded is in another location than your Downloads folder, you would replace "ffmpeg" with the path to ffmpeg which may be something like "/Users/<your username>/Documents/ffmpeg"
This command will create a new video file "outputfile.mp4" which is the same video as "inputfile.mp4" without the audio.
Method 2: HandBrake
If you are not comfortable using the command line, there is a gui program which you can use. You can download HandBrake for Windows here and for MacOS here.
Once you have installed HandBrake, you will be able to launch the program and you will want to click 'Open Source' to select your video for modifying.
Selecting a preset which conforms to the codecs and containers that we support as listed above should ensure that your videos can be processed successfully.
You can use the 'Destination' and 'Save As' fields to name the new file and decide where it will be stored when this operation is performed.
