How to View FFmpeg Help for All Supported Filters

This guide explains how to use the -h (help) parameter in FFmpeg to view detailed documentation for all supported audio and video filters. You will learn the exact commands to list available filters, query help for individual filters, and output detailed parameter information for every filter installed on your system.

Viewing Help for a Specific Filter

To view the help documentation and available options for a specific filter, use the -h parameter followed by filter= and the name of the filter.

ffmpeg -h filter=volume

Replace volume with any other filter name (such as scale, crop, or overlay) to see its specific arguments, value types, and default settings.

Listing All Available Filters

Before querying help, you can view a complete list of all supported filters compiled into your version of FFmpeg by running:

ffmpeg -filters

This outputs a list of all available filters along with timeline support, threading, and slice capabilities.

Viewing Help for All Filters Simultaneously

FFmpeg does not have a single native command like ffmpeg -h filter=all. However, you can view the help details for all filters at once using the following methods:

Method 1: The Full Help Dump

You can print the entire FFmpeg help configuration—which includes details for all filters, encoders, decoders, demuxers, and muxers—and pipe it to a text file for easy searching:

ffmpeg -h full > ffmpeg_full_help.txt

Method 2: Command-Line Loop (Linux and macOS)

To extract and display the -h help output specifically for every single supported filter, you can run a bash loop in your terminal:

for filter in $(ffmpeg -filters | awk 'NR>8 {print $2}'); do 
    ffmpeg -h filter=$filter
done

This command parses the filter list and automatically runs the ffmpeg -h filter=[name] command for each one sequentially.