FFmpeg is a collection of software libraries that can record, convert and stream digital audio and video in numerous formats. It includes libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, and libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library. The name of the project comes from the MPEG video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward".^[1] Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product. ... A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product. ... // An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. ... A multimedia framework is a software structure (usually a set of software libraries) that handles media on a computer and through a network. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ... Streaming media is multimedia that is continuously received by, and normally displayed to, the end-user while it is being delivered by the provider. ... Methods and media for sound recording are varied and have undergone significant changes between the first time sound was actually recorded for later playback until now. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... libavcodec is a free software/open source LGPL-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data; it is written in the C programming language. ... A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. ... A container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data, compressed by means of standardized codecs. ... In telecommunications, multiplexing (also muxing or MUXing) is the combining of two or more information channels onto a common transmission medium using hardware called a multiplexer or (MUX). ... The Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. ...

The project was started by Fabrice Bellard (using the pseudonym “Gerard Lantau”), and is now maintained by Michael Niedermayer. Most FFmpeg developers are also part of the MPlayer and VideoLAN projects, and FFmpeg is hosted at the MPlayer project server. Fabrice Bellard is a computer programmer who is best known as the founder of FFmpeg and project leader for Qemu. ... A pseudonym (Greek pseudo + -onym: false name) is an artificial, fictitious name, also known as an alias, used by an individual as an alternative to a persons true name. ... This article is about the open source media player. ... VideoLAN is a software development project comprising two multi-platform computer programs—VLC media player and VideoLAN Server (VLS)—and several audio/video decoding and decryption libraries. ...

FFmpeg is developed under Linux, but it can be compiled under most operating systems, including Microsoft Windows. There are no formal releases. Instead, FFmpeg developers recommend using the latest Subversion snapshot as development maintains a constantly stable trunk. Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License or GNU General Public License (depending on which sub-libraries one would include), FFmpeg is free software. Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system. ... // An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ... Subversion (SVN) is an open source version control system. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... Clockwise from top: The logo of the GNU Project (the GNU head), the Linux kernel mascot Tux the Penguin, and the FreeBSD daemon Free software is a term coined by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation[1] to refer to software that can be used, studied, and modified without...

Design

Diagram showing different applications (VDR, Mplayer, Xine and VideoLAN) using FFmpeg

Image File history File links FFmpeg. ... Image File history File links FFmpeg. ... VDR is a GPL open source application for Linux designed to allow any computer (that meets the specified minimum requirements) to function as a personal video recorder. ... xine (officially pronounced [ksi:n], like the name Maxine without Ma[1]) is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. ...

Components

The project is made of several components:

• ffmpeg is a command line tool to convert one video file format to another. It also supports grabbing and encoding in real time from a TV card.
• ffserver is an HTTP (RTSP is being developed) multimedia streaming server for live broadcasts. Time shifting of live broadcast is also supported.
• ffplay is a simple media player based on SDL and on the FFmpeg libraries.
• libavcodec is a library containing all the FFmpeg audio/video encoders and decoders. Most codecs were developed from scratch to ensure best performance and high code reusability.
• libavformat is a library containing demuxers and muxers for audio/video container formats.
• libavutil is a helper library containing routines common to different parts of FFmpeg.
• libpostproc is a library containing video postprocessing routines.
• libswscale is a library containing video image scaling routines.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. ... The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), developed by the IETF and published in 1998 as RFC 2326, is a protocol for use in streaming media systems which allows a client to remotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commands such as play and pause, and allowing time-based... Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform multimedia free software library written in C that creates an abstraction over various platforms graphics, sound, and input APIs, allowing a developer to write a computer game or other multimedia application once and run it on many operating systems including GNU/Linux... libavcodec is a free software/open source LGPL-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data; it is written in the C programming language. ... See also: Post-production The term post-processing is used in the video/film business for quality-improvement methods used in video playback devices, (such as stand-alone DVD-Video players). ... In computer graphics, image scaling is the process of resizing a digital image. ...

Codecs and formats supported

The FFmpeg developers have reverse-engineered and/or reimplemented, among others: Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of taking something (a device, an electrical component, a software program, etc. ...

Codecs

See libavcodec for more details. libavcodec is a free software/open source LGPL-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data; it is written in the C programming language. ...

• ATRAC3^[2]
• H.261,^[2] H.263^[2] and h.264/MPEG-4 AVC^[2]
• Indeo 2 and 3^[2]
• QDesign Music Codec 2, used by many QuickTime movies prior to QuickTime 7.
• Sorenson 3 Codec used by many QuickTime movies
• Truespeech
• TXD^[3]
• VP5^[2] and VP6^[2]
• Windows Media Audio
• Windows Media Video

The default MPEG-4 codec used by FFmpeg for encoding has the FourCC of FMP4. Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) is a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony. ... H.261 is an 1990 ITU video coding standard originally designed for transmission over ISDN lines on which data rates are multiples of 64 kbit/s. ... H.263 is a video codec designed by the ITU-T as a low-bitrate encoding solution for videoconferencing. ... H.264 is a standard for video compression. ... Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as Indeo) is a video codec developed by Intel in 1992. ... The QDesign Music Codec was originally LBpack, by Dmitry Shmunk. ... The Sorenson codec (also known as Sorenson Video Codec, Sorenson Video Quantizer or SVQ) is a digital video codec devised by the company Sorenson Media. ... QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc. ... Truespeech is a proprietary audio codec produced by the DSP Group. ... VP5 is a video codec which was created by On2 Technologies in February 2002. ... TrueMotion VP6 is a video codec developed by On2 Technologies as a successor to earlier efforts such as VP3 and VP5. ... Windows Media Audio (WMA) is brand name for several technically distinct proprietary compressed audio file formats developed by Microsoft. ... Windows Media Video (WMV) is a generic name for the set of video codec technologies developed by Microsoft. ... MPEG-4 is a standard used primarily to compress audio and visual (AV) digital data. ... A FOURCC (literally, four character code) is a sequence of four bytes used to uniquely identify data formats. ...

Formats

• ASF, and thereby the original version of DivX
• AVI
• Matroska
• TXD^[3]
• FLV

Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format) is Microsofts proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ... DivX is a brand name of products created by DivX, Inc. ... // Audio-Video Interleaved, known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. ... The Matroska Multimedia Container is a true multimedia container that allows you to have in one single file an unlimited number of audio, video, picture or subtitle files. ... FLV (Flash Video) is a proprietary file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player (formerly known as Macromedia Flash Player) version 6, 7, 8, or 9. ...

Legal status

FFmpeg's legal status varies by country. Some included codecs, (such as Sorenson 3), are claimed by patent owners. Such claims may be enforceable in countries like the United States which recognize software patents. Furthermore, many of these codecs are only released under terms that forbid reverse engineering, even for purposes of interoperability. However, these terms of use are forbidden in certain countries. For example, some European Union nations do not recognize software patents and/or have laws expressly allowing reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability^[4]. In any case, many Linux distributions do not include FFmpeg to avoid legal complications. You can read FFmpeg team statement here. Software patents are a type of intellectual property and one of many legal aspects of computing. ...

References

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... March 29 is the 88th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (89th in leap years). ... is the 107th day of the year (108th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 116th day of the year (117th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... June 1 is the 152nd day of the year (153rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Council Directive 91/250/EEC of 14 May 1991 on the legal protection of computer programs is a European Union directive in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. ...

See also

free software Portal

• Open source codecs and containers
• ffdshow

Image File history File links Portal. ... This is a listing of open source multimedia codecs and containers. ... ffdshow is an open source decoder (and encoder) mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e. ...

External links

• FFmpeg homepage
• FFmpeg for Mac OS X
• Wiki on server-side usage of ffmpeg
• FFmpegX for Mac OS X
• FFmpeg for OS/2/eComstation
• Source for an FFmpeg compositing vhook
• FFmpeg Broadcast features howto