However this might be an alternative approach using the ass filter. I know this question is about achieving the result with the drawtext filter. Still wondering if there is a way ffmpeg could scale font size text to fit some fixed width. Had to measure each letter width in Photoshop in pixels at 100pt font size. Plan-B works fine: bash function that calculates word length depending on each letter width in the particular font. Maybe some filter to detect a least-sized rectangle with non-transparent pixels? Is there a way in ffmpeg to fit a variable-width text to fixed dimensions? This approach fails with some words, as the font has variable width letters, and 'MMM' vs. I determined the font size for 3- and 11-char sample words and tried linear interpolation to get font size, depending on the word length. zoompan filter does the zooming afterwards. I made it work with the shortest 3-character long sample word and the longest 11-character one.ĭrawtext filter generates a transparent png with big margins around the text. Maybe this compositing job suits smth like After Effects, but the task is ffmpeg implementation. The animation involves pan and zoom that the word follows. A script takes a single word 3 to 11 characters long, draws it with a custom font and overlays on top of a video.

Ffmpeg scale image to fill container