FFmpeg is a

free and open-source software 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 ...

project consisting of a suite of

libraries A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...

and

programs Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Progra ...

for handling video, audio, and other

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

files and streams. At its core is the

command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. It is widely used for format

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target d ...

, basic editing (trimming and

concatenation In formal language theory and computer programming, string concatenation is the operation of joining character strings end-to-end. For example, the concatenation of "snow" and "ball" is "snowball". In certain formalisations of concatenat ...

video scaling A video scaler is a system which converts video signals from one display resolution to another; typically, scalers are used to convert a signal from a lower resolution (such as 480p standard definition) to a higher resolution (such as 1080i High ...

, video

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. Th ...

effects and standards compliance (

SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...

ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Union ...

). 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 libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs 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 and VLC media players u ...

, an audio/video

codec 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 ...

library used by many commercial and free software products, libavformat (Lavf), an audio/video container mux and demux library, and libavfilter, a library for enhancing and editing filters through a

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 the ...

-like filtergraph. 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 YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

and

Bilibili Bilibili (stylized bilibili), nicknamed B Site, is a video sharing website based in Shanghai where users can submit, view and add overlaid commentary on videos. Since the mid-2010s, Bilibili began to expand to a broader audience from its ori ...

. 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.

History

The project was started by

Fabrice Bellard Fabrice Bellard (; born 1972) is a French computer programmer known for writing FFmpeg, QEMU, and the Tiny C Compiler. He developed Bellard's formula for calculating single digits of pi. In 2012, Bellard co-founded Amarisoft, a telecommunicat ...

(using the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...

"Gérard Lantau") in 2000, and was led by Michael Niedermayer from 2004 until 2015. Some FFmpeg developers were also part of the MPlayer project. The name of the project is inspired by the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward". The logo uses a

zigzag A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular. In geometry, this pattern is described as ...

pattern that shows how MPEG video codecs handle entropy encoding. 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. 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 Fuzz may refer to: * ''Fuzz'' (film), a 1972 American comedy * '' Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law'', a nonfiction book by Mary Roach * The fuzz, a slang term for police officers Music * Fuzz (electric guitar), distortion effects to create "w ...

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

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

s. 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 In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

version control system In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections ...

Codec history

Two video coding formats with corresponding codecs and one

container format A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. No ...

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. 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 WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponso ...

and VP8. In October 2013, a native VP9 decoder and OpenHEVC, an open source

High Efficiency Video Coding 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 comp ...

(HEVC) decoder, were added to FFmpeg. In 2016 the native AAC encoder was considered stable, removing support for the two external AAC encoders from

VisualOn VisualOn is a Silicon Valleybased multimedia software company that provides high-definition audio and video entertainment to smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected TVs and other mobile and convergent devices. VisualOn's patented technology is ...

and

FAAC FAAC or Freeware Advanced Audio Coder is a software project which includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC. It supports several MPEG-4 Audio object types (LC, Main, LTP for encoding and SBR, ...

. FFmpeg 3.0 (nicknamed ''"Einstein"'') retained build support for the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder. Since version 3.4 ''"Cantor"'' FFmpeg supported the

FITS Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) is an open standard defining a digital file format useful for storage, transmission and processing of data: formatted as multi-dimensional arrays (for example a 2D image), or tables. FITS is the most commo ...

image format. Since November 2018 in version 4.1 ''"al-Khwarizmi"'' AV1 can be muxed in MP4 and Matroska incl.

Components

Command line tools

* ''ffmpeg'' is a command-line tool that converts audio or video formats. It can also capture and encode in real-time from various hardware and software sources such as a TV capture card. * ''ffplay'' is a simple media player utilizing SDL and the FFmpeg libraries. * ''ffprobe'' is a command-line tool to display media information (text, CSV,

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other se ...

), see also Mediainfo.

Libraries

* ''libswresample'' is a library containing audio resampling routines. * ''libavresample'' is a library containing audio resampling routines from the Libav project, similar to ''libswresample'' from ''ffmpeg''. * ''

'' is a library containing all of the native FFmpeg audio/video encoders and decoders. Most codecs were developed from scratch to ensure best performance and high code reusability. * ''libavformat'' (Lavf) 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. This library includes hash functions, ciphers, LZO decompressor and Base64 encoder/decoder. * ''libpostproc'' is a library containing older

H.263 H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x fam ...

based video postprocessing routines. * ''libswscale'' is a library containing video image scaling and

colorspace 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 represen ...

/pixelformat conversion routines. * ''libavfilter'' is the substitute for vhook which allows the video/audio to be modified or examined between the decoder and the encoder. Filters have been ported from many projects including MPlayer and avisynth. * ''libavdevice'' is a library containing audio/video io through internal and external devices.

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 set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ...

s are supported by FFmpeg, including x86 (

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnatio ...

and

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging ...

), PPC (

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...

), ARM,

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set compute ...

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system develope ...

, and MIPS.

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.

Use with the FFmpeg utility

Internal hardware acceleration decoding is enabled through the -hwaccel option. It starts decoding normally, but if a decodable stream is detected in hardware, then the decoder designates all significant processing to that hardware, thus accelerating the decoding process. Whereas if no decodable streams are detected (as happens on an unsupported codec or profile), hardware acceleration will be skipped and it will still be decoded in software. -hwaccel_device option is applied when the hardware requires a particular device to function especially when there are several graphic cards available.

Supported codecs and formats

Image formats

FFmpeg supports many common and some uncommon image formats. The PGMYUV image format is a homebrewn 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: The data can be passed through without being processed through -c copy. One use is cutting video footage without requiring the time and processing of re-encoding.

Muxers

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

AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange ...

* ASF *

AVI Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail. People with the given name include: * Avi (born 1937), Newbery award-winning Americ ...

and also input from AviSynth * BFI * CAF *

FLV Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are ...

* GIF * GXF, General eXchange Format, SMPTE 360M * HLS, HTTP Live Streaming * IFF * ISO base media file format (including

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 a ...

3GP 3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2 (3GPP2 ...

and MP4) * Matroska (including

) * Maxis XA * MPEG-DASH *

MPEG program stream Program stream (PS or MPEG-PS) is a container format for multiplexing digital audio, video and more. The PS format is specified in MPEG-1 Part 1 (ISO/IEC 11172-1) and MPEG-2 Part 1, Systems (ISO/IEC standard 13818-1/ITU-T H.222.0). The MPEG-2 ...

MPEG transport stream MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast syste ...

(including

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around th ...

) * MXF, Material eXchange Format, SMPTE 377M * MSN Webcam stream * NUT * Ogg * OMA * RL2 * Segment, for creating segmented video streams *

Smooth Streaming Adaptive bitrate streaming is a technique used in streaming multimedia over computer networks. While in the past most video or audio streaming technologies utilized streaming protocols such as RTP with RTSP. Today's adaptive streaming tech ...

* TXD * WTV

Pixel formats

FFmpeg supports many pixel formats. Some of these formats are only supported as input formats. The command ffmpeg -pix_fmts provides a list of supported pixel formats. 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

*IETF RFCs: ** FTP ** Gopher ** HLS **

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

** HTTPS ** RTP **

RTSP The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is an application-level network protocol designed for multiplexing and packetizing multimedia transport streams (such as interactive media, video and audio) over a suitable transport protocol. RTSP is u ...

** SCTP ** SDP ** SRTP ** TCP **

TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...

** UDP **

UDP-Lite UDP-Lite (Lightweight User Datagram Protocol) is a connectionless protocol that allows a potentially damaged data payload to be delivered to an application rather than being discarded by the receiving station. This is useful as it allows decisio ...

* IETF I-Ds: ** SFTP (via libssh) * Microsoft OSP: ** CIFS/SMB (via libsmbclient) ** MMS over TCP (MS-MMSP) **MMS over HTTP (MS-WMSP) * CENELEC ** SAT>IP *

OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

standards: **

AMQP The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware. The defining features of AMQP are message orientation, queuing, routing (including point-to-point and publish-and-subsc ...

0-9-1 (via librabbitmq) * SRT Alliance standard: ** SRT (via libsrt)

De facto standard A ''de facto'' standard is a custom or convention that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces (for example, by early entrance to the market). is a Latin phrase (literally " in fact"), here meaning "in practice b ...
s

* RTSP over TLS * Icecast protocol * Adobe RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPE, RTMPTE and RTMPS * RealMedia RTSP/ RDT * ZeroMQ (via libzmq) * RIST (librist)

Supported filters

FFmpeg supports, among others, the following filters.

Audio

* Resampling (aresample) * Pass/Stop filters **

Low-pass filter A low-pass filter is a filter that passes signals with a frequency lower than a selected cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies higher than the cutoff frequency. The exact frequency response of the filter depends on the filt ...

(lowpass) **

High-pass filter A high-pass filter (HPF) is an electronic filter that passes signals with a frequency higher than a certain cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies lower than the cutoff frequency. The amount of attenuation for each frequency ...

(highpass) **

All-pass filter An all-pass filter is a signal processing filter that passes all frequencies equally in gain, but changes the phase relationship among various frequencies. Most types of filter reduce the amplitude (i.e. the magnitude) of the signal applied to i ...

(allpass) **

Butterworth Butterworth may refer to: Places * Butterworth (ancient township), a former township centred on Milnrow, in the then Parish of Rochdale, England, United Kingdom * Butterworth, Eastern Cape, now also known as Gcuwa, a town located in South Africa * ...

Band-pass filter (bandpass) ** Butterworth Band-stop filter (bandreject) * Arbitrary Finite Impulse Response Filter (afir) * Arbitrary Infinite Impulse Response Filter (aiir) * Equalizer ** Peak Equalizer (equalizer) ** Butterworth/ Chebyshev Type I/Type II Multiband Equalizer (anequalizer) ** Low Shelving filter (bass) ** High Shelving filter (treble) ** Xbox 360 rqulizer ** FIR equalizer (firequalizer) **

Biquad filter Electronic filter topology defines electronic filter circuits without taking note of the values of the components used but only the manner in which those components are connected. Filter design characterises filter circuits primarily by their t ...

(biquad) * Remove/Add

DC offset In signal processing, when describing a periodic function in the time domain, the DC bias, DC component, DC offset, or DC coefficient is the mean amplitude of the waveform. If the mean amplitude is zero, there is no DC bias. A waveform with n ...

(dcshift) * Expression evaluation ** Time domain expression evaluation (aeval) ** Frequency domain expression evaluation (afftfilt) * Dynamics **

Limiter In electronics, a limiter is a circuit that allows signals below a specified input power or level to pass unaffected while attenuating (lowering) the peaks of stronger signals that exceed this threshold. Limiting is a type of dynamic range comp ...

(alimiter) **

Compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Compressors are similar to pumps: both increase the pressure on a fluid and both can tr ...

(acompressor) ** Dynamic range expander () ** Side-chain Compressor (sidechaincompress) ** Compander (compand) ** Noise gate (agate) ** Side-chain Noise gate(sidechaingate) * Distortion **

Bitcrusher A Bitcrusher is an audio effect that produces distortion by reducing of the resolution or bandwidth of digital audio data. The resulting quantization noise may produce a "warmer" sound impression, or a harsh one, depending on the amount of redu ...

(acrusher) * Emphasis (aemphasis) * Amplify/Normalizer ** Volume (volume) ** Dynamic Audio Normalizer (dynaudnorm) **

EBU R 128 EBU R 128 is a recommendation for loudness normalisation and maximum level of audio signals. It is primarily followed during audio mixing of television and radio programmes and adopted by broadcasters to measure and control programme loudness. ...

loudness normalizer (loudnorm) * Modulation ** Sinusoidal Amplitude Modulation (tremolo) ** Sinusoidal Phase Modulation (vibrato) ** Phaser (aphaser) **

Chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

(chorus) ** Flanger (flanger) ** Pulsator (apulsator) * Echo/Reverb ** Echo (aecho) * Routing/ Panning ** Stereo widening (stereowiden) ** Increase channel differences (extrastereo) ** M/S to L/R (stereotools) ** Channel mapping (channelmap) ** Channel splitting (channelsplit) ** Channel panning (pan) ** Channel merging (amerge) ** Channel joining (join) ** for

Headphones Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an a ...

*** Stereo to Binaural (earwax, ported from SoX) *** Bauer Stereo to Binaural (bs2b, via libbs2b) *** Crossfeed (crossfeed) *** Multi-channel to Binaural (sofalizer, requires libnetcdf) **

Delay Delay (from Latin: dilatio) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Delay 1968'', a 1981 album by German experimental rock band Can * '' The Delay'', a 2012 Uruguayan film People * B. H. DeLay (1891–1923), American aviator and ac ...

*** Delay (adelay) *** Delay by distance (compensationdelay) * Fade ** Fader (afade) **

Crossfader In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for film cinematography or theatre lighting in much the same way (see fade (filmmaking) and fade (lighting)). A rec ...

(acrossfade) * Audio time stretching and pitch scaling ** Time stretching (atempo) ** Time-stretching and Pitch-shifting (rubberband, via librubberband) * Editing **

Trim Trim or TRIM may refer to: Cutting * Cutting or trimming small pieces off something to remove them ** Book trimming, a stage of the publishing process ** Pruning, trimming as a form of pruning often used on trees Decoration * Trim (sewing), ...

(atrim) ** Silence-padding (apad) ** Silence remover (silenceremove) * Show frame/channel information ** Show frame information (ashowinfo) ** Show channel information (astats) ** Show silence ranges (silencedetect) ** Show audio volumes (volumedetect) ** ReplayGain scanner (replaygain) * Modify frame/channel information ** Set output format (aformat) ** Set number of sample (asetnsamples) ** Set sampling rate (asetrate) *

Mixer Mixer may refer to: Electronics * DJ mixer, a type of audio mixing console used by disc jockeys * Electronic mixer, electrical circuit for adding signal voltages * Frequency mixer, electrical circuit that creates new frequencies from two signals ...

(amix) *

Synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronou ...

(asyncts) * HDCD data decoder (hdcd) * Plugins **

LADSPA LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is an application programming interface (API) standard for handling audio filters and audio signal processing effects, licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later. It was originally des ...

(ladspa) ** LV2 (lv2) * Do nothing ()

Video

* Transformations ** Cropping (crop, cropdetect) **

Fading In wireless communications, fading is variation of the attenuation of a signal with various variables. These variables include time, geographical position, and radio frequency. Fading is often modeled as a random process. A fading channel is ...

(fade) ** Scaling (scale) ** Padding (pad) ** Rotation (rotate) ** Transposition (transpose) ** Others: *** Lens correction (lenscorrection) ***

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 ...

filtering (ocv) *** Perspective correction (perspective) * Temporal editing **

Framerate Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images ( frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ...

(fps, framerate) ** Looping (loop) ** Trimming (trim) * Deinterlacing (bwdif, idet, kerndeint, nnedi, yadif, w3fdif) * Inverse Telecine * Filtering ** Blurring (boxblur, gblur, avgblur, sab, smartblur) **

Convolution In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions ( and ) that produces a third function (f*g) that expresses how the shape of one is modified by the other. The term ''convolution'' ...

filters *** Convolution (convolution) *** Edge detection (edgedetect) ***

Sobel Filter The Sobel operator, sometimes called the Sobel–Feldman operator or Sobel filter, is used in image processing and computer vision, particularly within edge detection algorithms where it creates an image emphasising edges. It is named after I ...

(sobel) *** Prewitt operator, Prewitt Filter (prewitt) *** Unsharp masking (unsharp) * Noise reduction, Denoising (atadenoise, bitplanenoise, dctdnoiz, owdenoise, removegrain) * Logo removal (delogo, removelogo) * Subtitle (captioning), Subtitles (Advanced SubStation Alpha, ASS, subtitles) * Alpha compositing, Alpha channel editing (alphaextract, alphamerge) * Chroma key, Keying (chromakey, colorkey, lumakey) * Frame detection ** Black frame detection (blackdetect, blackframe) ** Thumbnail selection (thumbnail) * Frame Blending (blend, tblend, overlay) * Image stabilization, Video stabilization (vidstabdetect, vidstabtransform) * Color and Level adjustments ** Color balance, Balance and levels (colorbalance, colorlevels) ** Channel mixing (colorchannelmixer) ** Color space (colorspace) ** Parametric adjustments (curves, eq) * Histograms and visualization ** CIE Scope (ciescope) ** Vectorscope (vectorscope) ** Waveform monitor (waveform) ** Color histogram (histogram) * Drawing * Optical character recognition, OCR * Quality measures ** Structural similarity, SSIM (ssim) ** Peak signal-to-noise ratio, PSNR (psnr) * Lookup Tables ** lut, lutrgb, lutyuv, lut2, lut3d, haldclut

Supported test patterns

* SMPTE color bars (smptebars and smptehdbars) * EBU color bars (pal75bars and pal100bars)

Supported LUT formats

* Rising Sun Research, cineSpace LUT format * List of acquisitions by Adobe, Iridas Cube * Adobe After Effects 3dl * DaVinci Resolve dat * Pandora International, Pandora m3d

Supported media and interfaces

FFmpeg supports the following devices via external libraries.

Media

* Compact disc (via libcdio; input only)

Physical interfaces

* IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. FireWire; via libdc1394 and libraw1394; input only) * IEC 61883 (via libiec61883; input only) * Blackmagic Design, DeckLink * Brooktree video capture chip (via bktr driver; input only)

Audio IO

* Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) * Open Sound System (OSS) * PulseAudio * JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK; input only) * OpenAL (input only) * sndio * Core Audio (for macOS) ** AVFoundation (input only) ** AudioToolbox (output only)

Video IO

* Video4Linux2 * Video for Windows (input only) * Windows DirectShow * Android Camera (input only)

Screen capture and output

* Simple DirectMedia Layer 2 (output only) * OpenGL (output only) * Linux framebuffer (fbdev) * Graphics Device Interface (GDI; input only) * X Window System (X11; via XCB; input only) * X video extension (XV; via Xlib; output only) * Direct Rendering Manager#Kernel Mode Setting, Kernel Mode Setting (via libdrm; input only)

Others

* ASCII art (via libcaca; output only)

Applications

Legal aspects

FFmpeg contains more than 100 codecs, 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. 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. 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

FFmpeg is used by software such as Blender (software), Blender, Cinelerra-GG Infinity, HandBrake, Kodi (software), Kodi, MPC-HC, Plex (software), Plex, Shotcut, VirtualDub2 (a VirtualDub fork), VLC media player, xine and

.. It handles video and audio playback in Google Chrome and the Linux version of Firefox. Graphical user interface, GUI front-end (computing), front-ends for FFmpeg have been developed, including Multimedia Xpert and XMedia Recode. FFmpeg is used by ffdshow, FFmpegInterop, the GStreamer FFmpeg plug-in, LAV Filters and OpenMAX#Layers, 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), Perseverance rover on Mars for image and video compression before footage is sent to Earth.

References

External links

* {{Compression software FFmpeg, Assembly language software Command-line software C (programming language) libraries Cross-platform free software Free codecs Free computer libraries Free music software Free software programmed in C Free video conversion software Multimedia frameworks Software that uses FFmpeg Software using the LGPL license