FFmpeg drawtext - Could not load fontface from fil

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

Try putting quotes on the parameter:

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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: fontcolor=yellow@0.2: box=1: boxcolor=red@0.2'
Error initializing filter 'drawtext' with args 'fontfile=C:/Windows/Fonts/Arial.ttf: text=Test Text:x=100: y=50: fontsize=24: fontcolor=yellow@0.2: box=1: boxcolor=red@0.2'
Error opening filters!

Answer 4

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