FFmpeg
Comprehensive multimedia framework for decoding, encoding, transcoding, muxing, demuxing, streaming, filtering, and playback of nearly any audio or video format, with command-line tools, integrated libraries, portable code, and regular security updates for users and developers.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
Features
Properties
- Customizable
- Lightweight
- Privacy focused
Features
- Audio Conversion
- Video Converter
- Command line interface
- Integrated Codecs
- Video filters
- Console-based
- Works Offline
- Ad-free
- Portable
- Batch Editing
- No registration required
- No Tracking
- Lossless Audio
- Hardware Accelerated
- Support for 4K
- Slideshow Maker
- Audio Recording
- Support for MIDI
Tags
- universal
- video-encoding
- multimedia-framework
- video-decoding
- Media Information
- post-processor
- splitters
- tag-editor
- video-transcoder
- codecs
FFmpeg News & Activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about FFmpeg
FFmpeg 8.0 launches with AV1 Vulkan encoding and enhanced security defaultsFFmpeg 8.0, codenamed "Huffman" arrives over 10 months after 7.1 with TLS peer certificate verifica...
- POX published news article about FFmpeg
FFmpeg 7.1 released with stable VVC decoder, Vulkan hardware encoding, and much moreFFmpeg 7.1 “Péter” has been released, offering significant updates to the cross-platform solution f...
- POX published news article about FFmpeg
FFmpeg 7.0 released with experimental VCC decoder, IAMF support and multithreaded CLI toolFFmpeg, the renowned cross-platform software for recording, converting, and streaming audio and vid...
Recent activities
ryahn added FFmpeg as alternative to ffmpeg_encode- R0sbif liked FFmpeg
POX added FFmpeg as alternative to Aura Audio Converter- RemovedUser liked FFmpeg
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I use these software on Windows
What is FFmpeg?
FFmpeg is the leading multimedia framework, able to decode, encode, transcode, mux, demux, stream, filter and play pretty much anything that humans and machines have created. It supports the most obscure ancient formats up to the cutting edge. No matter if they were designed by some standards committee, the community or a corporation. It is also highly portable: FFmpeg compiles, runs, and passes our testing infrastructure FATE across Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, the BSDs, Solaris, etc. under a wide variety of build environments, machine architectures, and configurations.
It contains libavcodec, libavutil, libavformat, libavfilter, libavdevice, libswscale and libswresample which can be used by applications. As well as ffmpeg, ffplay and ffprobe which can be used by end users for transcoding and playing.
The FFmpeg project tries to provide the best technically possible solution for developers of applications and end users alike. To achieve this we combine the best free software options available. We slightly favor our own code to keep the dependencies on other libs low and to maximize code sharing between parts of FFmpeg. Wherever the question of "best" cannot be answered we support both options so the end user can choose.
Everyone is welcome in FFmpeg and all contributions are welcome too. We are happy to receive patches, pull requests, bug reports, donations or any other type of contribution.
Security is a high priority and code review is always done with security in mind. Though due to the very large amounts of code touching untrusted data security issues are unavoidable and thus we provide as quick as possible updates to our last stable releases when new security issues are found.












Comments and Reviews
This tool is integrated into so many commercial products without getting much acknowledgement. It has a steep learning curve but with a few simple example searches it can replace nearly all video and some image manipulation paid apps.
CLI editors for videos and images are insane or very special purpose.
FFmpeg is not exception.
My thoughts exactly: "a CLI tool for media editing / conversion? are you insane?!"
But, after trying a whole bunch of apps with disappointing results, I started using this CLI insanity and figured out how powerful & downright convenient it can be...
And then there's the fact that this CLI tool in particular is the brains behind almost all GUI apps for media editing / conversion / streaming / playing... so yeah, color me a fan.
FFMPEG is the ImageMagick-equivalent for video processing. It's supremely powerful and the basis for many other tools. You've probably used it without even realizing. However, it's command line only and has an instruction manual 100's of pages long. But if your Google-Fu is strong, it is an excellent tool for video processing.
Use it for screen-recording via ShareX. Reliable and never had any issues with it.
The mother of all. Accept you must use the cli and you will do wonders with this.
This is at the core of many video editing/transcoding applications.
Very useful for any format, even screenshot and capture TV cards