FFmpeg

The industry-standard, complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert, and stream audio and video.

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A powerful command-line tool that decodes, encodes, transcodes, muxes, demuxes, streams, filters, and plays pretty much anything humans and machines have created. It powers the playback and processing of video in thousands of software applications worldwide.

What we love ❤️

  • Supports virtually every obscure and modern audio/video format known.
  • Extremely efficient and highly customizable via command-line arguments.
  • Includes libavcodec, the leading open-source codec library.
  • Offers hardware acceleration for encoding/decoding on various GPUs.
  • Totally free and open-source.

Worth noting 💡

  • Command-line interface (CLI) only; requires learning syntax.
  • Steep learning curve for complex filter chains.

FFmpeg is the Swiss Army knife of media processing. While its command-line nature might intimidate beginners, it is the fundamental engine behind most video software in the world. For developers and power users, it is indispensable, professional-grade, and completely free.