The name of the project is inspired by the MPEG video standards group, together with 'FF' for 'fast forward'. Codecs for the encoding and/or decoding of most of all known audio and video file formats is included, making it highly useful for the transcoding of common and uncommon media files into a single common format.

At its core is the FFmpeg program itself, designed for command-line-based processing of video and audio files, and widely used for format transcoding, basic editing (trimming and concatenation), video scaling, video post-production effects, and standards compliance (SMPTE, ITU).įFmpeg includes libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by many commercial and free software products, libavformat (Lavf), an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the core ffmpeg command line program for transcoding multimedia files.įFmpeg is part of the workflow of hundreds of 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 and the iTunes inventory of files.

FFmpeg is a free and open-source project consisting of a vast software suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams.

What is ffmpeg core files