Draw text string or text from specified file on top of video using the libfreetype library.

To enable compilation of this filter you need to configure FFmpeg with --enable-libfreetype.

The filter also recognizes strftime() sequences in the provided text and expands them accordingly. Check the documentation of strftime().

The filter accepts parameters as a list of key=value pairs, separated by ":".

The description of the accepted parameters follows.

fontfile

The font file to be used for drawing text. Path must be included. This parameter is mandatory.

text

The text string to be drawn. The text must be a sequence of UTF-8 encoded characters. This parameter is mandatory if no file is specified with the parameter textfile.

textfile

A text file containing text to be drawn. The text must be a sequence of UTF-8 encoded characters.

This parameter is mandatory if no text string is specified with the parameter text.

If both text and textfile are specified, an error is thrown.

x, y

The offsets where text will be drawn within the video frame. Relative to the top/left border of the output image.

The default value of x and y is 0.

fontsize

The font size to be used for drawing text. The default value of fontsize is 16.

fontcolor

The color to be used for drawing fonts. Either a string (e.g. "red") or in 0xRRGGBB[AA] format (e.g. "0xff000033"), possibly followed by an alpha specifier. The default value of fontcolor is "black".

boxcolor

The color to be used for drawing box around text. Either a string (e.g. "yellow") or in 0xRRGGBB[AA] format (e.g. "0xff00ff"), possibly followed by an alpha specifier. The default value of boxcolor is "white".

box

Used to draw a box around text using background color. Value should be either 1 (enable) or 0 (disable). The default value of box is 0.

shadowx, shadowy

The x and y offsets for the text shadow position with respect to the position of the text. They can be either positive or negative values. Default value for both is "0".

shadowcolor

The color to be used for drawing a shadow behind the drawn text. It can be a color name (e.g. "yellow") or a string in the 0xRRGGBB[AA] form (e.g. "0xff00ff"), possibly followed by an alpha specifier. The default value of shadowcolor is "black".

ft_load_flags

Flags to be used for loading the fonts.

The flags map the corresponding flags supported by libfreetype, and are a combination of the following values:

• default
• no_scale
• no_hinting
• render
• no_bitmap
• vertical_layout
• force_autohint
• crop_bitmap
• pedantic
• ignore_global_advance_width
• no_recurse
• ignore_transform
• monochrome
• linear_design
• no_autohint
• end table

Default value is "render".

For more information consult the documentation for the FT_LOAD_* libfreetype flags.

tabsize

The size in number of spaces to use for rendering the tab. Default value is 4.

For example the command:

drawtext="fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSerif.ttf: text='Test Text'"

will draw "Test Text" with font FreeSerif, using the default values for the optional parameters.

The command:

drawtext="fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSerif.ttf: text='Test Text':\
          x=100: y=50: fontsize=24: fontcolor=yellow@0.2: box=1: boxcolor=red@0.2"

will draw ’Test Text’ with font FreeSerif of size 24 at position x=100 and y=50 (counting from the top-left corner of the screen), text is yellow with a red box around it. Both the text and the box have an opacity of 20%.

Note that the double quotes are not necessary if spaces are not used within the parameter list.

For more information about libfreetype, check: http://www.freetype.org/.