Remove audio from video via CLI

ffmpeg: copy the video stream and drop all audio tracks.

Packages to install

Only ffmpeg is required. Stream copy keeps the original video quality.

ffmpeg

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg

How to run the command

Use -c copy to remux without re-encoding and -an to strip every audio stream.

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -c copy -an output.mp4

Dockerfile example

Build a minimal Ubuntu image with the required packages and run the conversion inside the container.

FROM ubuntu:24.04

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
        ffmpeg && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

WORKDIR /work

docker build -t remove-audio-from-video .
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/work" -w /work remove-audio-from-video \
  ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -c copy -an output.mp4

Example commands

Run these locally after installing the packages, or inside the container from the Dockerfile.

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -map 0:v -c copy -an output.mp4

ffmpeg -y -i input.webm -map 0:v -c copy -an output.webm

ffmpeg -y -i input.avi -map 0:v -c copy -an output.avi