Understanding the concepts behind ffmpeg

Question

I was interested in video streaming which brought me to meet framwork named ffmpeg. Including ffserver like server, ffprobe and a lot of tools.

There is lot of stuff there.

I want to get more knowledge about how videos, audios, images are processed and mux & demux & fragmentation & stream analyzing. There is a lot of theories that I ignore.

Is there any resources or any thing to go on the road? White to begin with?

Answer 1

I still consider the most straightforward way to start with FFmpeg, even before the more detailed documentation itself, is studying the following files:

• doc/examples/demuxing.c
• doc/examples/muxing.c

Because they are like the "2 + 2 = 4" of FFmpeg. They are included with FFmpeg source code.

• demuxing: Open the input file, find the streams, get the content (packets), decode, get the decoded information...
• muxing: Open the output file, create a stream, encode some information, write to file...

Understand this is more than enough for you to go by yourself more confortable and faster. Or you may prefer start by the documentation as LordNeckbeard suggested (I +1 for it!). It depends on how you prefer. This is just my opinion!

Good luck! FFmpeg is great! ;-)

Answer 2

Check out the documentation, experiment with FFmpeg, and ask questions in the various user resources.

Documentation resources

• Official FFmpeg Documentation – This is regenerated nightly and corresponds to the newest FFmpeg revision. Consult your locally installed documentation for older versions.

• FFmpeg Wiki – Targeted for beginners and contains various articles and guides to supplement the official documentation.

Official user help resources

• ffmpeg-user mailing list – An active list that will provide good answers if you ask smart questions and provide the required information: this includes your actual ffmpeg command and the complete console output. Make sure to read the FFmpeg Mailing List Etiquette before asking a question.

• libav-user mailing list – For questions involving the ffmpeg libraries: libavcodec, libavformat, libavutil, libavfilter, libavdevice, libswscale, libswresample, and libpostproc.

• #ffmpeg IRC channel on Freenode – Live chat with other FFmpeg users and developers. You may have to wait for an answer due to timezone differences, etc. Use a link to a pastebin service such as pastebin.com to provide your ffmpeg command and the complete console output.

Other user help resources

• Super User – Some knowledgeable ffmpeg users are active here. For ffmpeg command-line interface tool questions.

• Stack Overflow – For FFmpeg API and library usage questions. Not for ffmpeg command-line interface tool questions.