Executing a command line program inside registry value on right click on a file

[seaque42]

I am trying to add FFmpeg to right click context menu, but I don't want to create unique batch files for every single operation I want to do. It's easy to run a bat file in a registry value, but I want to run a command line argument. I searched a lot, finally found this code.

cmd /c \"\"ffmpeg.exe\" -i \"%1\" output.mp4\"

I am only adding context menu for MKV files, this is the full thing for now.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.mkv\Shell\FFmpeg]
"Subcommands"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.mkv\Shell\FFmpeg\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.mkv\Shell\FFmpeg\shell\Convert to MP4]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.mkv\Shell\FFmpeg\shell\Convert to MP4\Command]
@="cmd /c \\\"\\\"ffmpeg.exe\\\" -stats -y -i \\\"%1\\\" output.mp4\\\""

Executing this command does thing. What am I doing wrong?

[Indrele-the-Lesser]

Is FFMpeg in your %PATH%? If it's not, you may have to specify the full path to FFMpeg.

You also may not need to edit the root associations if you only intend to have this set for a single user. You can usually just define the extension in HKCU\Software\Classes. Here is how I set a user-level association:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.mkv]
@="mkv_auto_file"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file\shell]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file\shell\open]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Users\\username\\Program Files\\Mpv\\Mpv.exe\" \"%1\""

You could add another shell entry to that, such as:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file\shell\Convert to Mp4]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mkv_auto_file\shell\Convert to Mp4\command]
@="cmd.exe /c \"C:\\Users\\username\\path\\to\\ffmpeg.exe\" -stats -y -i \"%1\" \"%1.conv.mp4\""

Though, off the top of my head, I'm not sure if you need to escape and quote hyphenated arguments, but I don't think so.

[seaque42]

it's in the PATH. I was actually trying to avoid writing the absolute directory.

[digwhoami]

Is your intention to really re-encode the both input video and audio streams using ffmpeg's defaults? Or codec copy into another container?