cleanvid

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cleanvid downloads, strips metadata, re-encodes, and standardizes video files with parallel terminal progress. It is built as a single Bash script for Linux shell workflows.

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Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
• Examples
• Sample Video
• How It Works

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Features

Area	What it does
Parallel processing	Handles multiple inputs concurrently instead of processing one file at a time.
Download mode	Downloads remote videos with wget, then sends successful downloads into the sterilization phase.
Metadata removal	Uses FFmpeg metadata and bit-exact flags to remove container and stream metadata.
Standard output	Produces H.264 video with AAC audio in an .mp4 container.
Encoder selection	Supports NVIDIA h264_nvenc by default and CPU libx264 with -c cpu.

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Requirements

Command	Required for
ffmpeg	Re-encoding and metadata removal
ffprobe	Duration detection for progress calculation
awk / gawk	Numeric formatting and progress math
tput	Terminal cursor control for live progress
wget	Remote download mode only

The install command also uses curl to download the script.

On Debian/Ubuntu, install the required runtime tools with:

sudo apt install curl ffmpeg gawk wget ncurses-bin

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Installation

Install cleanvid directly into /usr/local/bin:

sudo sh -c 'curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tarpetos/cleanvid/master/cleanvid -o /usr/local/bin/cleanvid && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cleanvid'

After that, run it from anywhere:

cleanvid

To update later, run the install command again:

sudo sh -c 'curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tarpetos/cleanvid/master/cleanvid -o /usr/local/bin/cleanvid && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cleanvid'

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Usage

cleanvid [-c cpu|cuda] [-k] [-w] INPUT1 [INPUT2 ...]

Option	Meaning
-c cpu	Encode video with CPU using libx264.
-c cuda	Encode video with NVIDIA h264_nvenc. This is the default mode.
-k	Keep original input files after successful processing.
-w	Treat inputs as remote URLs and download them before processing.

By default, successful local inputs are removed after the sanitized output is written. Use -k when you want to keep the original files.

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Examples

Local Video File

Process one local file:

cleanvid sample-5s-360p.mp4

Process multiple local files:

cleanvid vacation.mp4 wedding.mov

Keep the original local file:

cleanvid -k sample-5s-360p.mp4

Web Video URL

Download and process a remote file:

cleanvid -w https://samplelib.com/mp4/sample-5s-360p.mp4

Download, process, and keep the downloaded source file:

cleanvid -w -k https://samplelib.com/mp4/sample-5s-360p.mp4

Use CPU encoding:

cleanvid -c cpu sample-5s-360p.mp4

More examples are available in examples/README.md.

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Sample Video

You can use this small public MP4 for testing:

https://samplelib.com/mp4/sample-5s-360p.mp4

To download it locally:

wget -O sample-5s-360p.mp4 https://samplelib.com/mp4/sample-5s-360p.mp4

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How It Works

1. Inputs are collected from local file paths or remote URLs.
2. In wget mode, remote files are downloaded to temporary files first.
3. Each successful input is probed with ffprobe to read its duration.
4. Files are processed in parallel with ffmpeg.
5. Metadata is stripped and streams are re-encoded to H.264/AAC.
6. Outputs are written as sequential videoN.mp4 files.
7. Source files are removed after successful processing unless -k is used.

FFmpeg is invoked with metadata stripping and bit-exact flags:

-map_metadata -1
-fflags +bitexact
-flags:v +bitexact
-flags:a +bitexact

Output filenames avoid existing videoN.mp4 files in the current directory.