FFmpeg drawtext - Could not load fontface from file [closed]

Question

I've try to add simple text on top of video with FFmpeg using drawtext parameter. Every time i'm going to do this, error is returned:

Could not load fontface from file 'arial.ttf': cannot open resource

To indicate the location of the font I used the following methods:

ffmpeg -i C:\Test\rec\vid_1321909320.avi -vf drawtext=fontfile=arial.ttf:text=test -sameq vid_1321909320.flv
ffmpeg -i C:\Test\rec\vid_1321909320.avi -vf drawtext=fontfile=C:\Windows\Fonts\arial.ttf:text=test -sameq vid_1321909320.flv

All have failed. Does anyone have experience with adding text using ffmpeg?

FFMPEG version: N-34549-g13b7781 build on Nov 6 2011

Answer 1

A colon ":" and a backslash "\" have special meaning when specifying the parameters for drawtext. So what you can do is to escape them by converting ":" to "\:" and "\" to "\\". Also you can enclose the path to your font file in single quotes incase the path contains spaces.

So you will have

ffmpeg -i C:\Test\rec\vid_1321909320.avi -vf drawtext=fontfile='C\:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arial.ttf':text=test vid_1321909320.flv

Answer 2

I was also having trouble with ffmpeg recognizing Windows paths. I finally just put the font Arial.ttf in the same folder as the input file and it worked.

[drawtext @ 03C66EA0] Key '/Windows/Fonts/Arial.ttf: text' not found.
[drawtext @ 03C66E00] Error parsing options string: 'fontfile=C:/Windows/Fonts/Arial.ttf: text=Test Text:x=100: y=50: fontsize=24: [email protected]: box=1: [email protected]'
Error initializing filter 'drawtext' with args 'fontfile=C:/Windows/Fonts/Arial.ttf: text=Test Text:x=100: y=50: fontsize=24: [email protected]: box=1: [email protected]'
Error opening filters!

Answer 3

You cannot have a colon in the path to your font file as the colon acts as a key sepperator in ffmpeg. I had the same problem.

try:

ffmpeg -i C:\Test\rec\vid_1321909320.avi -vf drawtext=fontfile=/Windows/Fonts/arial.ttf:text=test -sameq vid_1321909320.flv