avconv is a very fast video and audio converter that can also grab from a live audio/video source. it can also convert between arbitrary sample rates and resize video on the fly with a high quality polyphase filter.
avconv reads from an arbitrary number of input "files" (which can be regular files, pipes, network streams, grabbing devices, etc.), specified by the i option, and writes to an arbitrary number of output "files", which are specified by a plain output filename. anything found on the command line which cannot be interpreted as an option is considered to be an output filename.
each input or output file can in principle contain any number of streams of different types (video/audio/subtitle/attachment/data). allowed number and/or types of streams can be limited by the container format. selecting, which streams from which inputs go into output, is done either automatically or with the map option (see the stream selection chapter).
to refer to input files in options, you must use their indices (0based). e.g. the first input file is 0, the second is 1 etc. similarly, streams within a file are referred to by their indices. e.g. 2:3 refers to the fourth stream in the third input file. see also the stream specifiers chapter.
as a general rule, options are applied to the next specified file. therefore, order is important, and you can have the same option on the command line multiple times. each occurrence is then applied to the next input or output file. exceptions from this rule are the global options (e.g. verbosity level), which should be specified first.
