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libavcodec is a
free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
library of
codecs A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or da ...
for encoding and decoding video and audio data. libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPV,
xine xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries ...
and VLC media players use it as their main, built-in decoding engine that enables playback of many audio and video formats on all supported platforms. It is also used by the
ffdshow ffdshow is an open-source unmaintained codec library that is mainly used for decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. encoded with DivX or Xvid) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as we ...
tryouts decoder as its primary decoding library. libavcodec is also used in video editing and transcoding applications like
Avidemux Avidemux is a free and open-source software application for non-linear video editing and transcoding multimedia files. The developers intend it as "a simple tool for simple video processing tasks" and to allow users "to do elementary things in ...
,
MEncoder MEncoder is a free command line transcoding tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a sibling of MPlayer, and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using differ ...
or
Kdenlive Kdenlive (; acronym for ''KDE Non-Linear Video Editor'') is a free and open-source video editing software based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt. The project was started by Jason Wood in 2002, and is now maintained by a small team of develope ...
for both decoding and encoding. libavcodec contains decoder and sometimes encoder implementations of several proprietary formats, including ones for which no public specification has been released. As such, a significant
reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
effort is part of libavcodec development. Having such codecs available within the standard libavcodec framework gives a number of benefits over using the original codecs, most notably increased portability, and in some cases also better performance, since libavcodec contains a standard library of highly optimized implementations of common building blocks, such as DCT and
color space A color space is a specific organization of colors. In combination with color profiling supported by various physical devices, it supports reproducible representations of colorwhether such representation entails an analog or a digital represent ...
conversion. However, while libavcodec does strive to achieve decoding that is bit-exact to their official format implementations, occasional bugs and missing features in such re-implementations can sometimes introduce playback compatibility problems for certain files.


Implemented video codecs

libavcodec includes video decoders and/or encoders for the following formats: *
Animated GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap In computing, a bitmap is a mapping from some domain (for example, a range of integers) to bits. It is also called a bit array or bitmap index. As a noun, the ...
* Asus video format v1 and v2 * AVS (decoding only, encoding through libxavs) *
AV1 AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 th ...
*
CamStudio CamStudio is an open-source screencasting program for Microsoft Windows released as free software. The software renders videos in an AVI format. It can also convert these AVIs into Flash Video format, embedded in SWF files. CamStudio is w ...
format (decoding only) *
CineForm CineForm Intermediate is an open source (from October 2017) video codec developed for CineForm Inc by David Taylor, David Newman and Brian Schunck. On March 30, 2011, the company was acquired by GoPro which in particular wanted to use the 3D film c ...
(decoding only) *
Cinepak Cinepak is a lossy video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. One of the first video compression tools to achiev ...
* Creative YUV (CYUV, decoding only) *
Dirac Distributed Research using Advanced Computing (DiRAC) is an integrated supercomputing facility used for research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology in the United Kingdom. DiRAC makes use of multi-core processors and provides a variety o ...
* DNxHD * Duck Corporation Truemotion 1, 2, and RT codecs (Decoding only) *
FFV1 FFV1 (short for FF Video 1) is a lossless intra-frame video coding format. It can use either variable-length coding or arithmetic coding for entropy coding. The encoder and decoder are part of the free, open-source library libavcodec in the pr ...
* Flash Screen Video v1 and v2 *
H.261 H.261 is an ITU-T video compression standard, first ratified in November 1988. It is the first member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG, then Specialists Gro ...
* H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 * H.263 * H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (native decoder, encoding through
x264 x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. History ...
and hardware encoding) *
HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compari ...
(native decoder, encoding through
x265 x265 is a software codec for creating digital video streams in the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) video compression format developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC). It is available as a command-line app or a ...
and hardware encoding) * Huffyuv *
id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and ar ...
RoQ Video *
Indeo Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as "Indeo") is a family of audio and video formats and codecs first released in 1992, and designed for real-time video playback on desktop CPUs. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video s ...
(decoding only) * Lagarith (decoding only) *
MJPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG ...
*
MPEG-1 MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...
*
MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine tr ...
(the format used for example by the popular DivX and
Xvid Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi mas ...
codecs) *
Apple ProRes Apple ProRes is a high quality, "visually lossless" lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production that supports video resolution up to 8K. It is the successor of the Apple Intermediate Codec and was introduced ...
*
QuickDraw A quickdraw (also known as an extender) is a piece of climbing equipment used by rock and ice climbers to allow the climbing rope to run freely through protection such as a bolt anchors or other traditional gear while leading. A quickdraw ...
(decoding only) *
QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is avai ...
:
Graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...
(decoding only),
Video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
(decoding only) and
Animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...
(RLE) *
RealVideo RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 10. RealVideo is supported ...
RV10 and RV20 * RealVideo RV30 and RV40 (decoding only) * SheerVideo (decoding only) * Smacker video (decoding only) *
Snow Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout ...
*
Sorenson Spark Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. T ...
under the name FLV1 *
SVQ1 Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. T ...
*
SVQ3 Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. T ...
(decoding only) *
Theora Theora is a free file format, free Lossy compression, lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis ...
(native decoder, encoding through libtheora) *
TrueMotion On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. It ...
v1 and v2 (decoding only) *
VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...
(decoding only) * Sierra VMD Video (decoding only) *
VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...
VMnc (decoding only) *
VP3 On2 TrueMotion VP3 is a (royalty-free) lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. There is no formal specification for the VP3 bits ...
(decoding only) *
VP5 On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. It ...
(decoding only) *
VP6 On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Vi ...
(decoding only) *
VP7 On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. It ...
(decoding only) *
VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...
(native decoder, encoding through
libvpx libvpx is a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats, and for AV1 a special fork named libaom that ...
) *
VP9 VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google. VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265). At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. ...
(native decoder, encoding through libvpx) * VQA (decoding only) *
WMV Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...
version 7 and 8 * WMV version 9 (decoding only) * Windows Media Video Image (decoding only) * Windows Media Video Screen 1 and 2 (decoding only) *
Wing Commander Wing commander (Wg Cdr in the RAF, the IAF, and the PAF, WGCDR in the RNZAF and RAAF, formerly sometimes W/C in all services) is a senior commissioned rank in the British Royal Air Force and air forces of many countries which have historical ...
/Xan Video (decoding only)


Implemented audio codecs

libavcodec includes decoders and encoders for the following formats: *
8SVX 8-Bit Sampled Voice (8SVX) is an audio file format standard developed by Electronic Arts for the Commodore- Amiga computer series. It is a data subtype of the IFF file container format. It typically contains linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM ...
(decoding only) * AAC * AC-3 * AMR (decoding only) *
AMR-WB Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) is a patented wideband speech audio coding standard developed based on Adaptive Multi-Rate encoding, using a similar methodology to algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP). AMR-WB provides improved ...
(decoding only) *
Apple Lossless The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. ...
*
ATRAC Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) is a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony. MiniDisc was the first commercial product to incorporate ATRAC in 1992. ATRAC allowed a relatively small disc like MiniDisc to h ...
1, ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus and ATRAC9 (decoding only) *
Codec 2 Codec 2 is a low-bitrate speech audio codec (speech coding) that is patent free and open source. Codec 2 compresses speech using sinusoidal coding, a method specialized for human speech. Bit rates of 3200 to 450 bit/s have been successfully cre ...
*
Cook Codec {{Unreferenced, date=April 2010 The cook codec is a lossy audio compression codec developed by RealNetworks. It is also known as Cooker, Gecko, RealAudio G2, and RealAudio 8 low bitrate (RA8LBR). Introduced in 1998, the cook codec was the first ...
(decoding only) * DTS (encoder is highly experimental) * EA ADPCM (decoding only) *
E-AC-3 Dolby Digital Plus, also known as Enhanced AC-3 (and commonly abbreviated as DDP, DD+, E-AC-3 or EC-3) is a digital audio compression scheme developed by Dolby Labs for transport and storage of multi-channel digital audio. It is a successor to D ...
*
EVRC Enhanced Variable Rate CODEC (EVRC) is a speech codec used in CDMA networks. It was developed in 1995 to replace the QCELP vocoder which used more bandwidth on the carrier's network, thus EVRC's primary goal was to offer the mobile carriers more cap ...
(decoding only) *
FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
*
G.711 G.711 is a narrowband audio codec originally designed for use in telephony that provides toll-quality audio at 64 kbit/s. G.711 passes audio signals in the range of 300–3400 Hz and samples them at the rate of 8,000 samples per second ...
( μ-law and
A-law An A-law algorithm is a standard companding algorithm, used in European 8-bit PCM digital communications systems to optimize, i.e. modify, the dynamic range of an analog signal for digitizing. It is one of two versions of the G.711 standar ...
) *
G.722 G.722 is an ITU-T standard 7 kHz wideband audio codec operating at 48, 56 and 64 kbit/s. It was approved by ITU-T in November 1988. Technology of the codec is based on sub-band ADPCM (SB-ADPCM). The corresponding narrow-band codec based on ...
*
G.723.1 G.723.1 is an audio codec for voice that compresses voice audio in frames. An algorithmic look-ahead of duration means that total algorithmic delay is . Its official name is ''Dual rate speech coder for multimedia communications transmitting at ...
*
G.726 G.726 is an ITU-T ADPCM speech codec standard covering the transmission of voice at rates of 16, 24, 32, and 40  kbit/s. It was introduced to supersede both G.721, which covered ADPCM at 32 kbit/s, and G.723, which described ADPCM for ...
*
G.729 G.729 is a royalty-free narrow-band vocoder-based audio data compression algorithm using a frame length of 10 milliseconds. It is officially described as ''Coding of speech at 8 kbit/s using code-excited linear prediction'' speech coding (CS-ACEL ...
(decoding only) *
GSM 06.10 Full Rate (FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 or sometimes simply GSM) was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. It uses linear predictive coding (LPC). The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/a ...
(native decoder, encoding through
libgsm Full Rate (FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 or sometimes simply GSM) was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. It uses linear predictive coding (LPC). The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/a ...
) *
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
Music Coder and Indeo Audio Coder (decoding only) *
Meridian Lossless Packing Meridian Lossless Packing, also known as Packed PCM (PPCM), is a lossless compression technique for PCM audio data developed by Meridian Audio, Ltd. MLP is the standard lossless compression method for DVD-Audio content (often advertised with t ...
/
Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is a lossless, multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories for home video, used principally in Blu-ray Disc and compatible hardware. Dolby TrueHD, along with Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and Dolby AC-4, is one of the i ...
*
Monkey's Audio Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis, a ...
(decoding only) *
MP1 MPEG-1 Audio Layer I, commonly abbreviated to MP1, is one of three audio formats included in the MPEG-1 standard. It is a deliberately simplified version of MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2), created for applications where lower compression efficiency ...
(decoding only) * MP2 *
MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
(native decoder, encoding through
LAME Lame or LAME may refer to: Music * "Lame" (song) by Unwritten Law * ''Lame'' (album) by Iame People * Ibrahim Lame (born 1953), Nigerian educator and politician * Jennifer Lame (), American film editor * Quintín Lame (1880–1967), Colombian ...
) *
Nellymoser Asao Codec in Flash Asao (also known as Nellymoser audio codec) is a proprietary single-channel (mono) codec and compression format optimized for low-bitrate transmission of audio, developed by Nellymoser Inc. Technical Details Sound data is grouped into frames o ...
*
Opus ''Opus'' (pl. ''opera'') is a Latin word meaning "work". Italian equivalents are ''opera'' (singular) and ''opere'' (pl.). Opus or OPUS may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Opus number, (abbr. Op.) specifying order of (usually) publicatio ...
(native encoder and decoder, encoding through libopus) *
QCELP Qualcomm code-excited linear prediction (QCELP), also known as Qualcomm PureVoice, is a speech codec developed in 1994 by Qualcomm to increase the speech quality of the IS-96A codec earlier used in CDMA networks. It was later replaced with EVRC ...
(decoding only) * QDM2 (decoding only) * RealAudio 1.0 * RealAudio 2.0 (decoding only) * Shorten (decoding only) *
Truespeech Truespeech is a proprietary audio codec produced by the DSP Group. It is designed for encoding voice data at low bitrates (8.5kbps for 8kHz samples), and to be embedded into DSP chips. Truespeech had been integrated into Windows Media Player in old ...
(decoding only) *
TTA TTA may refer to *Tan Tan Airport, Morocco, IATA code *Teacher Training Agency, former name of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, England * Technical Theatre Awards, UK *Terran Trade Authority, the setting for a series of science-fict ...
*
TwinVQ TwinVQ (transform-domain weighted interleave vector quantization) is an audio compression technique developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) Human Interface Laboratories (now Cyber Space Laboratories) in 1994. The compression ...
(decoding only) *
Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
*
WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. I ...
*
Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The or ...
1 and 2 *
Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a Proprietary software, proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four d ...
(decoding only) * Windows Media Audio 9 Professional (decoding only) * Windows Media Audio Voice (decoding only)


Legal aspects

Libavcodec contains more than 100 codecs, most of which do not just store uncompressed data. Most codecs that compress information could be claimed by patent holders. Such claims may be enforceable in countries like the United States which have implemented
software patent A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, u ...
s, but are considered unenforceable or void in countries that have not implemented software patents. Furthermore, many of these codecs are only released under terms that forbid reverse engineering, even for purposes of interoperability. These terms of use are forbidden in certain countries. For example, some
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
nations have not implemented software patents and have laws expressly allowing
reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
for purposes of interoperability.


Libraries that depend on libavcodec

* libavformat (part of
FFmpeg 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 of vid ...
) * libgegl (optional part of
GEGL The Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed for GIMP in order to add support for higher bit depth images, and non-destructive editing. It was partiall ...
) ** libgimp (part of
GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...
) * libmpcodecs (part of
MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS usi ...
) ** libmpdemux (part of MPlayer)


Applications using libavcodec


Video players

* FFplay *
MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS usi ...
* mpv *
MPC-HC Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...
and
MPC-BE Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...
* VLC *
xine xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries ...


Audio players

*
Audacious Audacious may refer to: * ''Audacious'' (album), a 2016 album by Cupcakke * Audacious (software), an open-source media player Ships * List of ships named ''Audacious'' * HMS ''Audacious'', various ships of the British Royal Navy * ''Audaci ...
(Uses in audacious-plugins's ffaudio) *
Rockbox Rockbox is a free and open-source software replacement for the OEM firmware in various forms of digital audio players (DAPs) with an original kernel. It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the or ...
(Includes only FLAC code) * XMMS2


Multimedia players

* Gnash *
Moonlight Moonlight consists of mostly sunlight (with little earthlight) reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light strikes. Illumination The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar phase, but even the ful ...
*
swfdec Swfdec is an outdated free and open-source replacement for Adobe Flash Player. It runs on Linux and FreeBSD and is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Its last release was 0.8.4, on and latest in stable 0 ...


Video editors

See also
Comparison of video editing software General information This table gives basic general information about the different editors: Active Discontinued / inactive Definition * professional: used for full length Hollywood movies; * professional (small): mainly used for paid ...
*
Avidemux Avidemux is a free and open-source software application for non-linear video editing and transcoding multimedia files. The developers intend it as "a simple tool for simple video processing tasks" and to allow users "to do elementary things in ...
*
Cinelerra Cinelerra is a video editing and composition program (an NLE, Non-Linear Editor) designed for Linux. It is free software distributed under the open source GNU General Public License. In addition to editing, it supports advanced composition operati ...
*
Kdenlive Kdenlive (; acronym for ''KDE Non-Linear Video Editor'') is a free and open-source video editing software based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt. The project was started by Jason Wood in 2002, and is now maintained by a small team of develope ...
*
Kino Kino may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasters * KINO, a radio station in Arizona, U.S. * Kino FM (98.0 FM – Moscow), a Russian music radio station * KinoTV, now Ruutu+ Leffat ja Sarjat, a Finnish TV channel Fictional entiti ...


Audio editors

* Audacity (since 1.3.6) *
SoX Sox most often refers to: * Boston Red Sox, an MLB team * Chicago White Sox, an MLB team * An alternate spelling of socks Sox may also refer to: Places * SOX, Sogamoso Airport's IATA airport code, an airport in Colombia Computing and technolo ...
(optional)


Video converters

* avconv *
FFmpeg 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 of vid ...
* HandBrake *
MEncoder MEncoder is a free command line transcoding tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a sibling of MPlayer, and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using differ ...
*
SUPER Super may refer to: Computing * SUPER (computer program), or Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer, a video converter / player * Super (computer science), a keyword in object-oriented programming languages * Super key (keyboard butt ...


Video libraries

* GPAC *
Media Lovin' Toolkit Media Lovin' Toolkit (MLT) is an open source multimedia framework, designed and developed for television broadcasting. It provides a toolkit for broadcasters, video editors, media players, transcoders, web streamers and many more types of applic ...


Optical disc authoring

* K3b


Graphic libraries

*
GEGL The Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed for GIMP in order to add support for higher bit depth images, and non-destructive editing. It was partiall ...
*
ImageMagick ImageMagick, invoked from the command line as magick, is a free and open-source cross-platform software suite for displaying, creating, converting, modifying, and editing raster images. Created in 1987 by John Cristy, it can read and write ove ...


3D graphics editors

*
Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...


VoIP

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Ekiga Ekiga (formerly called GnomeMeeting) is a VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME and Microsoft Windows. It is distributed as free software under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. It was the default VoIP client in Ubuntu until Octob ...
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QuteCom QuteCom (previously called WengoPhone) was a free-software SIP-compliant VoIP client developed by the QuteCom (previously OpenWengo) community under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. It allows users to speak to other users of SIP-compliant VoIP sof ...
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Linphone __NOTOC__ Linphone (contraction of ''Linux phone'') is a free voice over IP softphone, SIP client and service. It may be used for audio and video direct calls and calls through any VoIP softswitch or IP-PBX. Linphone also provides the possibilit ...


Multimedia streaming server

* FFserver *
VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...


Multimedia frameworks

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ffdshow ffdshow is an open-source unmaintained codec library that is mainly used for decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. encoded with DivX or Xvid) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as we ...
(wraps libavcodec as a
DirectShow DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's ea ...
filter and adds postprocessing to improve image quality; once installed, it is automatically used by all Windows DirectShow video players, such as
Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...
,
Media Player Classic Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft ...
,
Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...
etc. It also wraps libavcodec as a
Video for Windows Video for Windows was a suite of video playing and editing software introduced by Microsoft in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of Windows ...
filter; the framework used by most video editing software.) *
LAV Filters 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 of vi ...
*
GStreamer GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one format, processes them, ...
via the GStreamer FFmpeg plugin *
Perian Perian is a discontinued open-source QuickTime component that enabled Apple Inc.’s QuickTime to play several popular video formats not supported natively by QuickTime on macOS. It was a joint development of several earlier open source component ...
* Bellagio OpenMAX Integration Layer – open-source OpenMAX IL API implementation


Computer vision libraries

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OpenCV OpenCV (''Open Source Computer Vision Library'') is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real-time computer vision. Originally developed by Intel, it was later supported by Willow Garage then Itseez (which was later acquired by In ...


Browser

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Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...


Media center

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MythTV MythTV is a free and open-source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital ...
* Plex * Kodi (formerly XBMC)


Screen capture

* xvidcap


Device utilities

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BitPim BitPim is an Open-source software, open source program designed for managing content on CDMA devices. Most mobile phones using a Qualcomm-manufactured CDMA chipset are supported. The program is also cross-platform, operating on the Microsoft W ...
– utilities for CDMA phones


CCTV

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ZoneMinder ZoneMinder is a free, open-source software application for monitoring via closed-circuit television - developed to run under Linux and FreeBSD and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Users control ZoneMinder via a we ...
– video camera security suite *
Motion In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and mea ...
– video camera security/monitoring program


Games

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Performous ''UltraStar'' is a clone of '' SingStar'', a music video game by Polish developer Patryk "Covus5" Cebula. ''UltraStar'' lets one or several players score points by singing along to a song or music video and match the pitch of the original son ...
– music game including singing, band and dance. * StepMania * Ultrastar *
osu! ''Osu!'' (stylized as ''osu!'') is a free-to-play rhythm game primarily developed, published, and created by Dean "peppy" Herbert. Inspired by iNiS' rhythm game ''Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan'', it was written in C Sharp (programming language), C# ...


Others

* CorePlayer *
FreeJ ''Freej'' ( ar, فريج; trademarked as ''FREEJ'') is an Emirati CGI television series for children. The English tagline for the show is ''The Fun Old Girls''. The show was produced by Mohammed Saeed Harib, who also directed the fifteen standal ...
* Ingex Studio – used by
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
*
PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD, macOS, as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating ...
– includes only resamplers code


References

{{Compression formats Audio libraries C (programming language) libraries Free codecs Free computer libraries Video libraries Free software programmed in C