Comment 19 for bug 730159

I hope you don't think I'm rejecting VanillaMozilla's insights.
I'm just a user suffering from this issue too... see #13 above.

I agree '-show-banner' would be preferable.
Why don't you file a bug at the ffmpeg bug tracker requesting it?
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/
(Leave a note here if you do.)

For anyone who isn't aware of 'bash aliases', they are a way of making the workaround permanent.
It is *really* easy to create one.
I'm following this example.[1]

Using a text editor append this to the bottom of the hidden file '~/.bashrc' and save it:

alias ffmpeg='ffmpeg -hide_banner'

Then enter this in the terminal and hit return:

. ~/.bashrc

(Note the space between the '.' and '~/.bashrc'.)

Now every time you run 'ffmpeg' it will automatically run 'ffmpeg -hide_banner' for you.
No more ffmpeg spam in your terminal and you don't have to remember to use the -hide_banner option.

See these for more on bash aliases:
[1] https://askubuntu.com/a/17538
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(command)