FFmpeg: How to Keep 100% Original Video Quality

To change your video's container without losing quality, open your terminal and navigate to the folder where your video file is located.

We will use the -c copy flag, which tells FFmpeg to copy the video and audio streams directly into the new file without re-encoding them.

Run this command:

ffmpeg -i video-file.webm -c copy new-video.mp4

Because FFmpeg is just copying the streams without rendering any frames, the process is practically instant and should only take a couple of seconds to complete.

To test that everything worked, check your folder for new-video.mp4 and open it up to confirm it plays back smoothly.

A quick tip: stream copying works as long as the target format supports your original video and audio codecs, making it the fastest way to turn .webm or .mkv files into MP4 format.

Thanks for watching :)