Developer(s) FFmpeg team Written in C99 | Preview release Git [±] | |
Stable release 57.64.100 (included in FFmpeg 3.2) (October 27, 2016; 4 months ago (2016-10-27)) [±] Repository git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/ffmpeg.git/tree/HEAD:/libavcodec Operating system | ||
libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data.
Contents
- Implemented video codecs
- Implemented audio codecs
- Legal aspects
- Libraries that depend on libavcodec
- Video players
- Audio players
- Multimedia players
- Video editors
- Audio editors
- Video converters
- Video libraries
- Optical disc authoring
- Graphic libraries
- 3D graphics editors
- VoIP
- Multimedia Streaming Server
- Multimedia frameworks
- Computer vision libraries
- Browser
- Media Center
- Screen Capture
- Device utilities
- CCTV
- Game
- Others
- References
libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPlayer, xine and VLC media players use it as their main, built-in decoding engine that enables playback of many audio and video formats on all supported platforms. It is also used by the ffdshow tryouts decoder as its primary decoding library. libavcodec is also used in video editing and transcoding applications like Avidemux, MEncoder or Kdenlive for both decoding and encoding.
libavcodec contains decoder and sometimes encoder implementations of several proprietary formats, including ones for which no public specification has been released. As such, a significant reverse engineering effort is part of libavcodec development. Having such codecs available within the standard libavcodec framework gives a number of benefits over using the original codecs, most notably increased portability, and in some cases also better performance, since libavcodec contains a standard library of highly optimized implementations of common building blocks, such as DCT and color space conversion. However, even though libavcodec strives for decoding that is bit-exact to the official implementation, bugs and missing features in such reimplementations can sometimes introduce compatibility problems playing back certain files.
Implemented video codecs
libavcodec includes video decoders and/or encoders for the following formats:
Implemented audio codecs
libavcodec includes decoders and encoders for the following formats:
Legal aspects
Libavcodec contains more than 100 codecs, most of which do not just store uncompressed data. Most codecs that compress information could be 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 software patents.
Furthermore, many of these codecs are only released under terms that forbid reverse engineering, even for purposes of interoperability. These terms of use are forbidden in certain countries. For example, some European Union nations have not implemented software patents and have laws expressly allowing reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability.
Libraries that depend on libavcodec
Video players
Audio players
Multimedia players
Video editors
See also Comparison of video editing software