[FFmpeg-user] Need help splitting stereo FLAC into two separate files

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Sat, Apr 04, 2020 at 18:34:23 -0700, Net Net wrote:
> C:\_Util\ffmpeg>ffmpeg.exe -i 1.flac -filter_complex
> 'channelsplit=channel_layout=2.0[FL][FR]' -map '[FL]' front_left.flac -map
> '[FR]' front_right.flac
[...]
> [AVFilterGraph @ 000001d1ff964340] No such filter:
> 'channelsplit=channel_layout=2.0[FL][FR]'
> Error initializing complex filters.
> Invalid argument

As the others speculated: Under Windows, "'" is not a command line
quotation character. If parts of the command line need to be quoted in
order to be collated, you need to use the double quotation mark '"'.
The single quotation mark is passed directly to ffmpeg on Windows,
making your filter argument unparsable.

So just use:
$ ffmpeg.exe [...] -filter_complex "channelsplit=channel_layout=2.0[FL][FR]" -map "[FL]" [...]

I believe a large part of ffmpeg's examples in doc and wiki are "wrong"
in this matter, and could or should be changed to also work on Windows,
where possible.

Cheers,
Moritz