Contents

Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 FFMPEG vs Libav

• Libav is a fork of FFMPEG which was originally started by Fabrice Bellard. The fork was basically a non-amicable result of conflicting personalities and development styles within the FFmpeg community.

1.2 Free sofware and patents

• Both, FFMPEG and Libav contains more than 100 codecs. Many codecs that compress information have been claimed by patent holders. Such claims may be enforceable in countries like the United States which have implemented software patents, but are considered unenforceable or void in countries that have not implemented patents.

Chapter 2
Installation

2.1 FFMPEG

2.1.1 Ubuntu

• In Debian/Ubuntu this is the preferable way because: (1) is the most general – it could be used in any distribution without significative modifications –, (2) uses the lastest software and (3) produces the most efficient machine code.
  mkdir ~/src  
  cd ~/src  
   
  # libx264  
  wget http://download.videolan.org/pub/x264/snapshots/last_x264.tar.bz2  
  tar xjvf last_x264.tar.bz2  
  cd x264-snapshot*  
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin" ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --bindir="$HOME/bin" --enable-static --disable-opencl  
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin" make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libfdk-aac (make sure "libtool" is installed)  
  wget -O fdk-aac.zip https://github.com/mstorsjo/fdk-aac/zipball/master  
  unzip fdk-aac.zip  
  cd mstorsjo-fdk-aac*  
  autoreconf -fiv  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-shared  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libmp3lame (make sure "nasm" is installed)  
  wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/lame/lame/3.99/lame-3.99.5.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf lame-3.99.5.tar.gz  
  cd lame-3.99.5  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --enable-nasm --disable-shared  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libopus  
  wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/opus/opus-1.1.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf opus-1.1.tar.gz  
  cd opus-1.1  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-shared  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libvpx (VP8/VP9)  
  wget http://webm.googlecode.com/files/libvpx-v1.3.0.tar.bz2  
  tar xjvf libvpx-v1.3.0.tar.bz2  
  cd libvpx-v1.3.0  
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin" ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-examples  
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin" make  
  make install  
  make clean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libogg  
  wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/ogg/libogg-1.3.1.tar.gz  
  tar xvf libogg-1.3.1.tar.gz  
  cd libogg-1.3.1  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-shared  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libvorbis  
  wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/vorbis/libvorbis-1.3.3.tar.gz  
  tar xvf libvorbis-1.3.3.tar.gz  
  cd libvorbis-1.3.3  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-shared  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # libtheora (make sure "texlive-fonts-recommended" and "doxygen" are installed)  
  wget http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2  
  tar xjvf libtheora-1.1.1.tar.bz2  
  cd libtheora-1.1.1  
  ./configure --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" --disable-shared --with-ogg="$HOME/ffmpeg_build"  
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  cd ..  
   
  # ffmpeg (make sure "libass-dev", "libasound2-dev", "libsdl1.2-dev"  
  # and "libx11-dev" are installed)  
  git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg  
  cd ffmpeg  
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin" PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib/pkgconfig" ./configure \  
    --prefix="$HOME/ffmpeg_build" \  
    --extra-cflags="-I$HOME/ffmpeg_build/include" \  
    --extra-ldflags="-L$HOME/ffmpeg_build/lib" \  
    --bindir="$HOME/bin" \  
    --enable-gpl \  
    --enable-libass \  
    --enable-libfdk-aac \  
    --enable-libfreetype \  
    --enable-libmp3lame \  
    --enable-libopus \  
    --enable-libtheora \  
    --enable-libvorbis \  
    --enable-libvpx \  
    --enable-libx264 \  
    --enable-nonfree \  
    --extra-libs=-lasound \  
    --enable-x11grab  
   
  # Note: at the moment of writting this document, there is a bug in the  
  # "x11grab" code (libxcb). If it persits, remove this option.  
   
  make  
  make install  
  make distclean  
  hash -r

2.1.2 Arch Linux

• Standard package:
  sudo pacman -S ffmpeg

• Full package:
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ff/ffmpeg-full/ffmpeg-full.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf ffmpeg-full.tar.gz  
  cd ffmpeg-full  
  makepkg # We see that there are several dependiencies  
  cd ..  
   
  # From the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S yasm ladspa hardening-wrapper  
   
  # Installing shine from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sh/shine/shine.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf shine.tar.gz  
  cd shine  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U shine-3.1.0-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing libbs2b from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/li/libbs2b/libbs2b.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf libbs2b.tar.gz  
  cd libbs2b  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U libbs2b-3.1.0-2-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing opencl-headers12 from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/op/opencl-headers12/opencl-headers12.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf opencl-headers12.tar.gz  
  cd opencl-headers12  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U opencl-headers12-1\:1.2.r29463-1-any.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing utvideo-git from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ut/utvideo-git/utvideo-git.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf utvideo-git.tar.gz  
  cd utvideo-git/  
  sudo pacman -S nasm  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U utvideo-git-15.0.0_87_6135aba-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing vid.stab from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S vid.stab  
   
  # Installing frei0r-plugins from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S frei0r-plugins  
   
  # Installing zeromq from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S zeromq  
   
  # Installing wavpack from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S wavpack  
   
  # Installing vo-amrwbenc from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/vo/vo-amrwbenc/vo-amrwbenc.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf vo-amrwbenc.tar.gz  
  cd vo-amrwbenc  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U vo-amrwbenc-0.1.3-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing vo-aacenc from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/vo/vo-aacenc/vo-aacenc.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf vo-aacenc.tar.gz  
  cd vo-aacenc  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U vo-aacenc-0.1.3-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing twolame from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S twolame  
   
  # Installing openal from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S openal  
   
  # Installing libwebp from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libwebp  
   
  # Installing libssh from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libssh  
   
  # Installing libiec61883 from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libiec61883  
   
  # Installing libgme from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libgme  
   
  # Installing libfdk-aac from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libfdk-aac  
   
  # Installing  from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S libavc1394  
   
  # Installing libaacplus from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/li/libaacplus/libaacplus.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf libaacplus.tar.gz  
  cd libaacplus  
  sudo pacman -S unzip  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U libaacplus-2.0.2-8-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing decklink-sdk from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/de/decklink-sdk/decklink-sdk.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf decklink-sdk.tar.gz  
  cd decklink-sdk/  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U decklink-sdk-1\:10.1.4-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  # Installing celt from the official repositories:  
  sudo pacman -S celt  
   
  # Installing libsoxr from AUR:  
  wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/li/libsoxr/libsoxr.tar.gz  
  tar xzvf libsoxr.tar.gz  
  cd libsoxr/  
  sudo pacman -S cmake  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U libsoxr-0.1.1-2-i686.pkg.tar.xz  
  cd ..  
   
  Edit your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf and uncomment the following line:  
  keyserver-options auto-key-retrieve  
   
  cd ffmpeg-full  
  makepkg  
  sudo pacman -U ffmpeg-full-1\:2.5.3-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz

2.2 Libav

2.2.1 Ubuntu

Chapter 3
Tools and help

3.1 FFMPEG/Libav command line tools

1. ffmpeg/avconv: encodes and transcodes.
2. ffplay/avplay: playbacks a video.
3. ffprobe/avprobe: gathers information from multimedia streams.
4. ffserver/avserver: a streaming server for both audio and video

3.2 manual

• For ffmpeg installed from sources:
  $ cd doc  
   
  # "man" manuals:  
  ls *.1  
  man ./ffmpeg.1      # FFMPEG’s basic manual  
   
  # "HTML" manuals:  
  ls *.html  
  firefox ./ffmpeg.1

• For ffmpeg/avconv installed from repository:
  man ffmpeg  
  man avconv

3.3 Built-in help

3.4 Synopsis

Chapter 4
File inspection

Chapter 5
Capturing

5.1 Recognized devices

5.2 Sound rcording (sound) from ALSA

5.3 Video recording from a V4L device

• Video4Linux (V4L) is a part of the Linux Kernel which provides an unified API for video capture (such as a WebCam). At this moment, it is as a subsystem of the LinuxTV Project (V4L2, Analog TV, DVB and Remote Controllers).

5.4 Video recording from the X11

Chapter 6
Converting

6.1 Supported formats and codecs

6.2 H.264 (x264)

• FFMPEG/Libav does not provide a native encoder for H.264 but wraps x264.

6.2.1 Presets and Tunes

• As it can be seen with:
  x264 --help

  presets are ultrafast, uperfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow and placebo. From left to right, the compression ratio grows although you more computational resources are needed (roughtly speaking, twice as slow as the previous). Tunings are film, animation, grain (used for very grainy or old content), stillimage, psnr (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), ssim (Structural SIMilarity), fastdecode and zerolatency.

• Tunings and presets can be mixed and matched, e.g. -preset fast -tune film.

6.2.2 Example

6.2.3 Profiles

• Profiles enforce a standard, ensuring compatibility with specific targets by restricting the encoding features used. Nowadays most decoders support the high profile, so this setting could be ignored.

6.2.4 Quality control

• This mode compress the video using a constant quality along time. Therefore, it provides the maximun quality although we don’t have control on the bit-rate (the only we know, as rule of thumb, is that every increase pf the quantization value by 5 halves the bitrate, 0 being lossless encoding).
  ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 640x480 -r 30 -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -crf 38 -crf_max 42 -f mpegts - | ffplay -  
  avconv -f video4linux2 -s 640x480 -r 30 -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -crf 38 -crf_max 42 -f mpegts - | avplay -

• You can control the maximun and minimun bit-rates, and the maximum buffer size. In this case, the quantization value could change although his value can be also controlled. Example:
  ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -s 640x480 -r 30 -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -crf 38 -crf_max 42 -maxrate 4M -bufsize 2M -f mpegts - | ffplay -  
  avconv -f video4linux2 -s 640x480 -r 30 -i /dev/video0 -c:v libx264 -crf 38 -crf_max 42 -maxrate 4M -bufsize 2M -f mpegts - | avplay -

6.2.5 Bit-rate control

• In order to precisely hit a defined filesize, thus a precise average bitrate, two-pass encoding is suggested. It takes more time than using crf and the result perceptually cannot be better, but in many scenarios the size requirement can be the most important issue.
  time ffmpeg -i /tmp/coastguard_352x288x30x420x300.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -b:v 800k -pass 1 -f null -  
  time ffmpeg -y -i /tmp/coastguard_352x288x30x420x300.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -b:v 800k -pass 2 /tmp/out.mkv  
   
  time avconv -i /tmp/coastguard_352x288x30x420x300.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -b:v 800k -pass 1 -f null -  
  time avconv -y -i /tmp/coastguard_352x288x30x420x300.avi -c:v libx264 -preset medium -b:v 800k -pass 2 /tmp/out.mkv

6.2.6 Lossless encoding

• Setting -crf or -qp to 0 forces x264 in lossless mode. In this case, the -preset settings then impact just the speed/size.

1. Fastest encoding:
   avconv -i input -c:v libx264 -preset superfast -qp 0 -c:a copy out.mkv

2. Smallest filesize:
   avconv -i input -c:v libx264 -preset veryslow -qp 0 -c:a copy out.mkv

6.3 HEVC

6.4 3D

Chapter 7
Editing

7.1 Extracting and inserting images

7.2 Creating two videos in parallel

7.3 Copy and paste

Chapter 8
Transcoding

8.1 Bit-rate

8.2 Frame-rate

Chapter 9
Streaming

9.1 One-to-one unicast

9.2 Multicast

9.3 One-to-many unicast