FFmpeg explained

Screenshot Size:300px
Author:Fabrice Bellard
Bobby Bingham (libavfilter)[1]
Developer:FFmpeg team
Released:[2]
Programming Language:C and Assembly[3]
Operating System:Various, including Windows, macOS, and Linux (executable programs are only available from third parties, as the project only distributes source code)[4] [5]
Platform:x86, ARM, PowerPC, MIPS, RISC-V, DEC Alpha, Blackfin, AVR32, SH-4, and SPARC; may be compiled for other desktop computers
Genre:Multimedia framework
License:LGPL-2.1-or-later, GPL-2.0-or-later
Unredistributable if compiled with any software with a license incompatible with the GPL[6]

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing (trimming and concatenation), video scaling, video post-production effects, and standards compliance (SMPTE, ITU).

FFmpeg also includes other tools: ffplay, a simple media player, and ffprobe, a command-line tool to display media information. Among included libraries are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by many commercial and free software products, libavformat (Lavf),[7] an audio/video container mux and demux library, and libavfilter, a library for enhancing and editing filters through a GStreamer-like filtergraph.[8]

FFmpeg is part of the workflow of many other software projects, and its libraries are a core part of software media players such as VLC, and has been included in core processing for YouTube and Bilibili. Encoders and decoders for many audio and video file formats are included, making it highly useful for the transcoding of common and uncommon media files.

FFmpeg is published under the LGPL-2.1-or-later or GPL-2.0-or-later, depending on which options are enabled.[9]

History

The project was started by Fabrice Bellard (using the pseudonym "Gérard Lantau") in 2000, and was led by Michael Niedermayer from 2004 until 2015.[10] Some FFmpeg developers were also part of the MPlayer project.

The name of the project is inspired by the MPEG video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward", so FFmpeg stands for "Fast Forward Moving Picture Experts Group".[11] The logo represents a zigzag scan pattern that shows how MPEG video codecs handle entropy encoding.[12]

On March 13, 2011, a group of FFmpeg developers decided to fork the project under the name Libav. The event was related to an issue in project management, in which developers disagreed with the leadership of FFmpeg.[13]

On January 10, 2014, two Google employees announced that over 1000 bugs had been fixed in FFmpeg during the previous two years by means of fuzz testing.[14]

In January 2018, the ffserver command-line program – a long-time component of FFmpeg – was removed.[15] The developers had previously deprecated the program citing high maintenance efforts due to its use of internal application programming interfaces.[16]

The project publishes a new release every three months on average. While release versions are available from the website for download, FFmpeg developers recommend that users compile the software from source using the latest build from their source code Git version control system.[17]

Codec history

Two video coding formats with corresponding codecs and one container format have been created within the FFmpeg project so far. The two video codecs are the lossless FFV1, and the lossless and lossy Snow codec. Development of Snow has stalled, while its bit-stream format has not been finalized yet, making it experimental since 2011. The multimedia container format called NUT is no longer being actively developed, but still maintained.[18]

In summer 2010, FFmpeg developers Fiona Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad, announced the ffvp8 decoder. Through testing, they determined that ffvp8 was faster than Google's own libvpx decoder. Starting with version 0.6, FFmpeg also supported WebM and VP8.[19]

In October 2013, a native VP9[20] decoder and OpenHEVC, an open source High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) decoder, were added to FFmpeg.[21] In 2016 the native AAC encoder was considered stable, removing support for the two external AAC encoders from VisualOn and FAAC. FFmpeg 3.0 (nicknamed "Einstein") retained build support for the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder.[22] Since version 3.4 "Cantor" FFmpeg supported the FITS image format.[23] Since November 2018 in version 4.1 "al-Khwarizmi" AV1 can be muxed in MP4 and Matroska incl. WebM.[24] [25]

Components

Command line tools

Libraries

Supported hardware

CPUs

FFmpeg encompasses software implementations of video and audio compressing and decompressing algorithms. These can be compiled and run on diverse instruction sets.

Many widespread instruction sets are supported by FFmpeg, including x86 (IA-32 and x86-64), PPC (PowerPC), ARM, DEC Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS.[27]

Special purpose hardware

There are a variety of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for audio/video compression and decompression. These ASICs can partially or completely offload the computation from the host CPU. Instead of a complete implementation of an algorithm, only the API is required to use such an ASIC.[28]

Firm ASIC purpose supported by FFmpeg Details
AMD decodingvia VDPAU API and VAAPI
encodingvia VAAPI, considered experimental[29]
Amlogic Amlogic Video Engine decoding?
BlackMagicDeckLinkencoding/decoding real-time ingest and playout
Broadcom decoding
QualcommHexagonencoding/decodinghwaccel[30]
Intel Intel Clear Video decoding(libmfx, VAAPI)
encoding/decoding(libmfx, VAAPI)
Nvidia decodingvia the VDPAU API as of FFmpeg v1.2 (deprecated)
via CUVID API as of FFmpeg v3.1[31]
NVENC encodingas of FFmpeg v2.6

The following APIs are also supported: DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA2, Windows), Direct3D 11 (D3D11VA, Windows), Media Foundation (Windows), VideoToolbox (iOS, iPadOS, macOS), RockChip MPP, OpenCL, OpenMAX, MMAL (Raspberry Pi), MediaCodec (Android OS), V4L2 (Linux). Depending on the environment, these APIs may lead to specific ASICs, to GPGPU routines, or to SIMD CPU code.[32]

Supported codecs and formats

Image formats

FFmpeg supports many common and some uncommon image formats.

The PGMYUV image format is a homebrew variant of the binary (P5) PGM Netpbm format. FFmpeg also supports 16-bit depths of the PGM and PPM formats, and the binary (P7) PAM format with or without alpha channel, depth 8 bit or 16 bit for pix_fmts monob, gray, gray16be, rgb24, rgb48be, ya8, rgba, rgb64be.

Supported formats

In addition to FFV1 and Snow formats, which were created and developed from within FFmpeg, the project also supports the following formats:

Group Format type Format name
ISO/IEC/ITU-TVideo MPEG-1 Part 2, H.261 (Px64), H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2, H.263, MPEG-4 Part 2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HEVC/H.265 (MPEG-H Part 2), MPEG-4 VCB (a.k.a. VP8), Motion JPEG, IEC DV video and CD+G
Audio MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, HE-AAC, MPEG-4 ALS, G.711 μ-law, G.711 A-law, G.721 (a.k.a. G.726 32k), G.722, G.722.2 (a.k.a. AMR-WB), G.723 (a.k.a. G.726 24k and 40k), G.723.1, G.726, G.729, G.729D, IEC DV audio and Direct Stream Transfer
Subtitle MPEG-4 Timed Text (a.k.a. 3GPP Timed Text)
Image JPEG, Lossless JPEG, JPEG-LS, JPEG 2000, JPEG XL,[33] PNG, CCITT G3 and CCITT G4
Alliance for Open MediaVideoAV1[34]
ImageAVIF
EIASubtitle EIA-608
CEASubtitle CEA-708
SMPTEVideo SMPTE 314M (a.k.a. DVCAM and DVCPRO), SMPTE 370M (a.k.a. DVCPRO HD), VC-1 (a.k.a. WMV3), VC-2 (a.k.a. Dirac Pro), VC-3 (a.k.a. AVID DNxHD)
Audio SMPTE 302M
Image DPX
ATSC/ETSI/DVBAudio Full Rate (GSM 06.10), AC-3 (Dolby Digital), Enhanced AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus) and DTS Coherent Acoustics (a.k.a. DTS or DCA)
Subtitle DVB Subtitling (ETSI 300 743)
DVD Forum/DolbyAudio MLP / Dolby TrueHD
Subtitle DVD-Video subtitles
Xperi/DTS, Inc/QDesignAudio DTS Coherent Acoustics (a.k.a. DTS or DCA), DTS Extended Surround (a.k.a. DTS-ES), DTS 96/24, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS Express (a.k.a. DTS-HD LBR), DTS-HD Master Audio, QDesign Music Codec 1 and 2
Blu-ray Disc AssociationSubtitle PGS (Presentation Graphics Stream)
Audio AMR-NB, AMR-WB (a.k.a. G.722.2)
Audio QCELP-8 (a.k.a. SmartRate or IS-96C), QCELP-13 (a.k.a. PureVoice or IS-733) and Enhanced Variable Rate Codec (EVRC. a.k.a. IS-127)<--C.S0014-->
World Wide Web ConsortiumVideo Animated GIF
Subtitle WebVTT
Image GIF, and SVG (via librsvg)
IETFVideo FFV1
Audio iLBC (via libilbc), Opus and Comfort noise<--RFC 3389-->
International Voice Association Audio DSS-SP
Video AVS video, AVS2 video (via libdavs2), and AVS3 video (via libuavs3d)
MicrosoftVideo Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, Cinepak, Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, v2 and v3, Windows Media Video (WMV1, WMV2, WMV3/VC-1), WMV Screen and Mimic codec
Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA1, WMA2, WMA Pro and WMA Lossless), XMA (XMA1 and XMA2),[35] MSN Siren, MS-GSM and MS-ADPCM
Subtitle SAMI
Image Windows Bitmap, WMV Image (WMV9 Image and WMV9 Image v2), DirectDraw Surface, and MSP[36]
Audio IMA ADPCM
Intel / Digital Video InteractiveVideo RTV 2.1 (Indeo 2), Indeo 3, 4 and 5, and Intel H.263
Audio DVI4 (a.k.a. IMA DVI ADPCM), Intel Music Coder, and Indeo Audio Coder
RealNetworksVideo RealVideo Fractal Codec (a.k.a. Iterated Systems ClearVideo), 1, 2, 3 and 4
Audio RealAudio v1 – v10, and RealAudio Lossless
Subtitle RealText
Apple / Spruce TechnologiesVideo Cinepak (Apple Compact Video), ProRes, Sorenson 3 Codec, QuickTime Animation (Apple Animation), QuickTime Graphics (Apple Graphics), Apple Video, Apple Intermediate Codec and Pixlet
Audio ALAC
Image QuickDraw PICT
Subtitle Spruce subtitle (STL)
Adobe Flash Player (SWF)Video Screen video, Screen video 2, Sorenson Spark and VP6
Audio Adobe SWF ADPCM and Nellymoser Asao
Adobe / AldusImage TIFF, PSD,[37] and DNG
Xiph.OrgVideo Theora
Audio Speex,[38] Vorbis, Opus and FLAC
Subtitle Ogg Writ
SonyAudio Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC1, ATRAC3, ATRAC3Plus,[39] and ATRAC9[40])[41] and PSX ADPCM
Audio TwinVQ
Video Duck TrueMotion 1, Duck TrueMotion 2, Duck TrueMotion 2.0 Real Time, VP3, VP4,[42] VP5, VP6, VP7, VP8,[43] VP9 and animated WebP
Audio DK ADPCM Audio 3/4, On2 AVC and iLBC (via libilbc)
Image WebP
Epic Games / RAD Game Tools Video Smacker video and Bink video
Audio Bink audio
Audio ADX ADPCM, and HCA
Video Mobiclip video
Audio GCADPCM (a.k.a. ADPCM THP), FastAudio, and ADPCM IMA MOFLEX
Audio Truespeech
Video RenderWare TXD,[44] Madcow, CMV, TGV, TGQ, TQI, Midivid VQ (MVDV), MidiVid 3.0 (MV30), Midivid Archival (MVHA), and Vector Quantized Animation (VQA)
Audio Electronic Arts ADPCM variants
Image PBM, PGM, PPM, PNM, PAM, PFM and PHM
Image XBM,[45] XPM and xwd
Video Silicon Graphics RLE 8-bit video, Silicon Graphics MVC1/2
Image Silicon Graphics Image
Image Sun Raster
Video IBM UltiMotion
Video Avid 1:1x, Avid Meridien, Avid DNxHD, Avid DNx444, and DNxHR
Image Targa
Video Autodesk Animator Studio Codec and FLIC
Image Alias PIX
Audio ADPCM Zork
Video HVQM4 Video
Audio Konami MTAF, and ADPCM IMA HVQM4
Video HQ, HQA, HQX and Lossless
Video SpeedHQ
Image Vizrt Binary Image[46]
Image OpenEXR
Video APNG[47]
Video Matrox Uncompressed SD (M101) / HD (M102)
Video ATI VCR1/VCR2
Video ASUS V1/V2 codec
Video CDXL codec
Image Photo CD
Image Cintel RAW
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / The Learning Company / ZSoft Corporation Image PCX
Image X-Face[48]
Audio SBC, and mSBC
Audio QCELP, aptX, and aptX HD
Open Mobile Alliance / WAP Forum Image Wireless Bitmap

Muxers

Output formats (container formats and other ways of creating output streams) in FFmpeg are called "muxers". FFmpeg supports, among others, the following:

Pixel formats

TypeColorPackedPlanarPalette
Without alpha Without alpha With alpha Chroma-interleaved With alpha
MonochromeBinary (1-bit monochrome)
RGBRGB 1:2:1 (4-bit color)
RGB 3:3:2 (8-bit color)
RGB 5:5:5 (High color)
RGB 5:6:5 (High color)
RGB/BGR
GBR[56]
RGB FloatRGB
GBR
YUVYVU 4:1:0
YUV 4:1:0
YUV 4:1:1
YVU 4:2:0
YUV 4:2:0
YVU 4:2:2
YUV 4:2:2
YUV 4:4:0
YVU 4:4:4
YUV 4:4:4
XYZXYZ 4:4:4[57]
BayerBGGR/RGGB/GBRG/GRBG
  1. Web site: Bobby announces work on libavfilter as GsOC project . 2008-02-09 . 2021-10-07 . https://web.archive.org/web/20211007032422/http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2008-February/045338.html . 2021-10-07 . live .
  2. Web site: Initial revision - git.videolan.org/ffmpeg.git/commit . git.videolan.org . 2000-12-20 . 2013-05-11 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131225083213/http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git%3Ba%3Dcommit%3Bh%3D9aeeeb63f7e1ab7b0b7bb839a5f258667a2d2d78 . 2013-12-25 .
  3. Web site: Developer Documentation . ffmpeg.org . 2011-12-08 . 2012-01-04 . 2012-02-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120204192831/http://ffmpeg.org/developer.html . live .
  4. Web site: Platform Specific Information . FFmpeg.org . 25 February 2020 . 25 February 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200225202151/https://ffmpeg.org/platform.html . live .
  5. Web site: Download . ffmpeg.org . FFmpeg . 2012-01-04 . 2011-10-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111006131811/http://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html . live .
  6. FFmpeg can be compiled with various external libraries, some of which have licenses that are incompatible with the FFmpeg's primary license, the GNU GPL.
  7. Web site: FFmpeg: Lavf: I/O and Muxing/Demuxing Library. ffmpeg.org. 21 October 2016. 3 December 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20161203035541/http://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/2.2/group__libavf.html. live.
  8. Web site: Libavfilter Documentation. 2021-10-07. ffmpeg.org. 2021-10-07. https://web.archive.org/web/20211007032443/https://ffmpeg.org/libavfilter.html. live.
  9. Web site: FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations. ffmpeg.org. 2012-01-04. 2012-01-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20120103190924/http://ffmpeg.org/legal.html. live.
  10. Web site: [FFmpeg-devel] FFmpegs future and resigning as leader]. 2015-09-22. Michael. Niedermayer. 31 July 2015 . 2015-08-15. https://web.archive.org/web/20150815230313/https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2015-July/176489.html. live.
  11. Web site: Bellard. Fabrice. Fabrice Bellard. 18 February 2006. FFmpeg naming and logo. 24 December 2011. FFmpeg developer mailing list. FFmpeg website. 26 April 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120426071311/http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2006-February/010315.html. live.
  12. Web site: Carlsen. Steve. 1992-06-03. [ftp://ftp.sgi.com/graphics/tiff/TIFF6.ps TIFF 6.0 specification]. 2016-08-14. Aldus Corporation. 98. PS. Zig-Zag Scan. Alt URL
  13. Web site: The FFmpeg/Libav situation. 2015-09-22. blog.pkh.me. 2012-07-01. https://web.archive.org/web/20120701210503/http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html. live.
  14. Web site: FFmpeg and a thousand fixes. January 10, 2014. googleblog.com. 21 October 2016. 22 October 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20161022022444/https://security.googleblog.com/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-thousand-fixes.html. live.
  15. Web site: ffserver – FFmpeg. trac.ffmpeg.org. 2018-02-03. 2018-02-04. https://web.archive.org/web/20180204000416/https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/ffserver. live.
  16. Web site: ffserver program being dropped. 2016-07-10. ffmpeg.org. en. 2018-02-03. 2016-07-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20160716124052/http://ffmpeg.org/index.html#ffserv. live.
  17. Web site: ffmpeg.org/download.html#releases. ffmpeg.org. 2015-04-27. 2011-10-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20111006131811/http://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html#releases. live.
  18. Web site: NUT. Multimedia Wiki. 2012. 2014-01-03. 2014-01-03. https://web.archive.org/web/20140103022122/http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=NUT. live.
  19. Web site: FFmpeg Goes WebM, Enabling VP8 for Boxee & Co . newteevee.com . 2010-06-17 . 2012-01-04 . ...with VLC, Boxee, MythTV, Handbrake and MPlayer being some of the more popular projects utilizing FFmpeg... . 2010-06-20 . https://web.archive.org/web/20100620003915/http://newteevee.com/2010/06/17/ffmpeg-goes-webm-enabling-vp8-for-boxee-co/ . dead .
  20. News: Native VP9 decoder is now in the Git master branch . . 2013-10-03 . 2013-10-21 . 2013-10-22 . https://web.archive.org/web/20131022011447/https://launchpad.net/ffmpeg/+announcement/12045 . live .
  21. News: FFmpeg Now Features Native HEVC/H.265 Decoder Support . . 2013-10-16 . 2013-10-16 . 2014-06-15 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140615002423/http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ffmpeg-Now-Features-Native-HEVC-H-265-Decoder-Support-391582.shtml . live .
  22. Web site: February 15th, 2016, FFmpeg 3.0 "Einstein". 2016-02-15. 2016-04-02. FFmpeg. FFmpeg. 2016-07-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20160716124052/http://ffmpeg.org/index.html#pr3.0. live.
  23. Web site: October 15th, 2017, FFmpeg 3.4 "Cantor". 2017-10-15. 2019-05-10. FFmpeg. FFmpeg. 2016-07-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20160716124052/http://ffmpeg.org/index.html#pr3.4. live.
  24. Web site: November 6th, 2018, FFmpeg 4.1 "al-Khwarizmi". 2018-11-06. 2019-05-10. FFmpeg. FFmpeg. 2016-07-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20160716124052/http://ffmpeg.org/index.html#pr4.1. live.
  25. Web site: Good News: AV1 Encoding Times Drop to Near-Reasonable Levels . Jan Ozer . 2019-03-04 . StreamingMedia.com . 2019-05-10 . 2021-05-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210514020514/https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=130284 . live .
  26. [:commons:File:Gentoo-portage-installing-and-using-of-equery.webm|This video of Linux desktop (X11) was captured by ffmpeg and encoded in realtime]
  27. Web site: FFmpeg Automated Testing Environment . Fate.multimedia.cx . 2012-01-04 . 2016-04-10 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160410165839/http://fate.multimedia.cx/ . live .
  28. Web site: FFmpeg Hardware Acceleration . ffmpeg.org Wiki . 2016-11-12 . 2016-12-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161204005157/http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HWAccelIntro . live .
  29. Web site: Hardware/VAAPI – FFmpeg. trac.ffmpeg.org. 2017-10-16. 2017-10-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20171016175234/https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Hardware/VAAPI. live.
  30. Web site: HEVC Video Encoder User Manual. 2021-02-23. Qualcomm Developer Network. en. 2021-04-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20210416113519/https://developer.qualcomm.com/download/hevc/hevc-video-encoder-user-manual.pdf. live.
  31. Web site: FFmpeg Changelog . . 2016-11-12 . 2017-03-21 . https://web.archive.org/web/20170321031856/https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/Changelog . live .
  32. Web site: HWAccelIntro – FFmpeg . trac.ffmpeg.org . 2016-11-12 . 2016-12-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161204005157/http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HWAccelIntro . live .
  33. Web site: FFmpeg Lands JPEG-XL Support . 2022-04-26 . www.phoronix.com . en . 2022-07-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220724085837/https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-JPEG-XL-Lands . live .
  34. Web site: git.ffmpeg.org Git - ffmpeg.git/commit. git.ffmpeg.org. en-US. 2018-04-23. 2018-04-23. https://web.archive.org/web/20180423232534/https://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/commit/43778a501f1bfbceeddc8eaeea2ea2b3506beeda. live.
  35. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-3.0-Released FFmpeg 3.0 Released, Supports VP9 VA-API Acceleration
  36. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-4.4-Released FFmpeg 4.4 Released With AV1 VA-API Decoder, SVT-AV1 Encoding
  37. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-3.3-Released FFmpeg 3.3 Brings Native Opus Encoder, Support For Spherical Videos
  38. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-5.0-Released FFmpeg 5.0 Released For This Popular, Open-Source Multimedia Library
  39. https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTY0MTA FFmpeg 2.2 Release Adds The Libx265 Encoder
  40. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-4.1-Released FFmpeg 4.1 Brings AV1 Parser & Support For AV1 In MP4
  41. Web site: Changelog . FFmpeg . FFmpeg trunk SVN . 17 April 2007 . 26 April 2007 .
  42. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-4.2-Released FFmpeg 4.2 Released With AV1 Decoding Support, GIF Parser
  43. https://www.phoronix.com/news/ODM0MA FFmpeg 0.6 Released With H.264, VP8 Love
  44. Web site: FFmpeg development mailing list . https://archive.today/20070811203618/http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2007-May/028760.html . dead . 11 August 2007 . FFmpeg . FFmpeg development . 7 May 2007 . 24 December 2010 .
  45. https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTEwNzM FFmpeg 0.11 Has Blu-Ray Protocol, New Encoders
  46. https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-5.1-Released FFmpeg 5.1 Released With Many Improvements To This Important Multimedia Project
  47. https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTg1NDQ FFmpeg 2.5 Brings Animated PNG, WebP Decoding Support
  48. https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI2OTA FFmpeg 1.1 Brings New Support, Encoders/Decoders
  49. Web site: vitor . FFmpeg development mailing list . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 13 April 2008 . 14 April 2008 .
  50. Web site: vitor . FFmpeg development mailing list . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 30 March 2008 . 30 March 2008 .
  51. Web site: FFmpeg: MaxisXADemuxContext Struct Reference . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 17 March 2024 . 17 March 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240317184808/https://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/5.1/structMaxisXADemuxContext.html . live .
  52. Web site: RELEASE NOTES for FFmpeg 2.5 "Bohr". 2014-12-05. VideoLAN. Michael Niedermayer, Timothy Gu. 2014-12-05. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20141208011850/http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git%3Ba%3Dblob%3Bf%3DRELEASE_NOTES%3Bhb%3Drelease%2F2.5. 2014-12-08.
  53. Web site: ramiro . FFmpeg development mailing list . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 18 March 2008 . 18 March 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080817072304/http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-cvslog/2008-March/012708.html . 17 August 2008 .
  54. Web site: banan . FFmpeg development mailing list . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 8 June 2008 . 8 June 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090114195646/http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-cvslog/2008-June/014417.html . 14 January 2009 .
  55. Web site: faust3 . FFmpeg development mailing list . FFmpeg website . FFmpeg development . 21 March 2008 . 21 March 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080425024126/http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-cvslog/2008-March/012799.html . 25 April 2008 .
  56. used in YUV-centric codecs such like H.264
  57. used in JPEG2000

FFmpeg does not support IMC1-IMC4, AI44, CYMK, RGBE, Log RGB and other formats. It also does not yet support ARGB 1:5:5:5, 2:10:10:10, or other BMP bitfield formats that are not commonly used.

Supported protocols

Open standards

De facto standards

Supported filters

FFmpeg supports, among others, the following filters.[61]

Audio

Video

Supported test patterns

Supported LUT formats

Supported media and interfaces

FFmpeg supports the following devices via external libraries.[63]

Media

Physical interfaces

Audio IO

Video IO

Screen capture and output

Others

Applications

Legal aspects

FFmpeg contains more than 100 codecs,[64] most of which use compression techniques of one kind or another. Many such compression techniques may be subject to legal claims relating to software patents.[65] Such claims may be enforceable in countries like the United States which have implemented software patents, but are considered unenforceable or void in member countries of the European Union, for example.[66] Patents for many older codecs, including AC3 and all MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 codecs, have expired.

FFmpeg is licensed under the LGPL license, but if a particular build of FFmpeg is linked against any GPL libraries (notably x264), then the entire binary is licensed under the GPL.

Projects using FFmpeg

See main article: category. FFmpeg is used by software such as Blender, Cinelerra-GG Infinity, HandBrake, Kodi, MPC-HC, Plex, Shotcut, VirtualDub2 (a VirtualDub fork),[67] VLC media player, xine and YouTube.[68] [69] It handles video and audio playback in Google Chrome and the Linux version of Firefox.[70] GUI front-ends for FFmpeg have been developed, including Multimedia Xpert[71] and XMedia Recode.

FFmpeg is used by ffdshow, FFmpegInterop, the GStreamer FFmpeg plug-in, LAV Filters and OpenMAX IL to expand the encoding and decoding capabilities of their respective multimedia platforms.

As part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, FFmpeg is used by the Perseverance rover on Mars for image and video compression before footage is sent to Earth.[72]

See also

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "FFmpeg".

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