ffmpeg single quote in drawtext

Question

I haven't been able to get ffmpeg's drawtext video filter to draw apostrophes/single quotes when they are in drawtext's "text=" parameter, even when I escape them. Double quotes work fine, and apostrophes in text loaded from a file (e.g. textfile="example.txt") work fine. Is this a bug?

e.g.

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="apostrophes don't print" ...
ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="even when they\'re escaped" ...

Mixie

Answer 1

Special character escapes are like violence: if they're not solving your problem, you're not using enough.

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext=text="It\\\\\'s so easy"

Produces a textual overlay that includes an apostrophe. The text is being parsed a couple times, so you not only have to escape the quote, you also have to escape the slash escaping the quote. Twice.

Your alternative of using a textfile might be a better method in this situation.

Chromium

While composing this command line from Java I actually had to code: this.watermarkText = watermarkText.replaceAll(":", "").replaceAll("\'", "\\\\\\\\\\\\'"); which, if you ask me, it totally whack. – Respirator

lol, I had the issue that I used single quotes also where this example uses double quotes around the text value. That doesn't work apparently, it needs to be double quotes. Or in my case I use a more complex -vf where I put the whole argument of -vf in double quotes and then don't use any quotes for the drawtext text value. Hope this may help someone. Thanks – Larose

I had to use more violence for it to work ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext=text="It\\\\\\\'s so easy" – Rumen

Answer 2

I was able to insert Unicode \u2019 into argument string and it worked for single right quote.

Bewray

how did you insert that? If i have a variable $string containing the text with the quote, what should I do to get the quote printed? – Sather

Filix this is the only way I could make it work using the node tool fluent-ffmpeg. Thanks! :) string.replace(/'/g, "\u2019"); // then feed this to the text property of drawtext – Asthenopia

This also worked for me in JavaScript: text = text.replace(/'/g, `\\\\\'`); text = text.replace(/\'/g, "\\" + `\\\\\'`);. – Anthonyanthophore

THIS IS SO HELPFUL – Rawley

Answer 3

// This works for me

public function replaceSpecialFfmpegChars($text)
    {
        return str_replace(
            ":",
            "\\\\\\\\\\\:",
            str_replace(
                "%",
                "\\\\\\\\\\\%",
                str_replace(
                    "'",
                    "'\\\\\\\\\\\\''",
                    str_replace(
                        "\"",
                        "\\\\\\\\\\\"",
                        str_replace(
                            "\\",
                            "\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\",
                            $text
                        )
                    )
                )
            )
        );
    }

Open

Ok, cool and working, thanks!!... but seriously... 😅 – Progestin

Genius, this is the only thing I could get working. – Krimmer

Answer 4

In case someone needs this for Python, this escape function is working for me (based on the FFmpeg Quoting and Escaping documentation + multi-escaping advice above):

return "'" + text.replace(":", "\\\\:").replace("'", "'\\\\\\\\\\\\''") + "'"

Heave

Not sure how this would be working for you it produces it's -> 'it'\\\''s' – Thesda

return text.replace(":", "\\:").replace("'", "\\\\\\\\\\\\'") – Thesda

It could depend on shell, I am using zsh :) – Heave

what would that command be for bash, if I have my string with quote in $string? I'm completely confused as to how many \ I should add, is it 5, is it 12? – Sather

You sir, are a lifesaver! – Loretaloretta

Answer 5

Just put your text into a file e.g. myText.txt and use textfile option:

->myText.txt This is my text with special characters :,(,),'

Then instead of using :

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf drawtext="This is my text with special characters :,(,),'"

use the following command:

ffmpeg -i test.mpg -vf textfile=textFile.txt

Tildie

I am using a bat file with draw text inside a filter_complex, and only this method worked for me, all other method using escape string didn't work for me – Subvert

Answer 6

For Windows Users:

The logic: for easier understanding I will call the single quote to be shown as a result: apostrophe and all other single quotes simply single quotes...

You have to put the first part of the text before the apostrophe between single quotes + 3 backslashes before the apostrophe, then the apostrophe itself + the text after the apostrophe between single quotes again"

So to produce: "apostrophes don't print" it would be:

drawtext=text='apostrophes don'\\\''t print'

Using an example:

ffplay -f lavfi  "color=blue:size=700x200,drawtext=text='apostrophes don'\\\''t print':fontsize=40:fontcolor=white:x=(W-tw)/2:y=(H-th)/2"

The other solution seems to be, to use a text file as already mentioned here by others:

drawtext=textfile=somefile.txt

Lainelainey

Answer 7

This is probably something to do with magic quotes. Through a bunch of testing I just did using Windows Command Line and MinGW on Windows, I ran into the same problem every time. Since ffmpeg drawtext uses Freetype (I would guess this is where magic quotes are enabled) I doubt there's much to be done to disable magic quotes. I'm not sure there's a way to remove the added slashes in the command line either, as everything I've seen involves PHP scripts. I could be wrong, since I'm no PHP guru, but I'm not aware of how to integrate them into an ffmpeg command.

Companion

Interesting, doesn't look like there's a solution then! Weird that it is possible to escape double quotes, semicolons etc. but not single quotes though... – Mixie

Yeah apostrophes are always the big problem. Whoever came up with magic quotes apparently decided that whenever you used it, it was always going to be an apostrophe in a contraction or to show ownership, where it's curved toward the preceding letter. I never did like magic quotes. – Companion

Answer 8

If you're passing the string via Python, the following works for me:

txt = 'it\'s good!'
txt = txt.replace('\'', '\'\\\\\\\\\\\'\'')

Chuffy

Answer 9

in node.js, i am able to put a colon in the text with this line.

let surahTxt = "QURAN " + chapterNo + "\\:"+ from + "-" + to ;

later this variable is used with the drawtext

Mordancy

Answer 10

ricardo-bohner's methods works really well, but just make sure that, you're getting exactly the as shown below:

I used this;

line = it's
str(line.replace("'", "'\\\\\\''"))

but due to the way I code some functions in the executed command, I got '\\\'' like below:

it'\\\''s

Bourke