FFmpeg is 20 years old today
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FFmpeg is 20 years old today
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#2Ffmpeg is an unusual piece of software. It’s CLI arguments (to me) are baffling. But it’s been around so long that there’s so many answered questions online for virtually anything you want it to do. Don’t bother reading the man page, go to google first.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#3I remember reading about it initially and saying "that sounds ambitious,and useful"... I think its safe to say they changed the world for the better with that single A/V swiss army knife tool. Amazing achievement.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#4Ffmpeg is an unusual piece of software. It’s CLI arguments (to me) are baffling. But it’s been around so long that there’s so many answered questions online for virtually anything you want it to do. Don’t bother reading the man page, go to google first.
I felt the same for years, but when you really dig into it you can learn a handful of flags that will get you what you want 90% of the time, and you can Go to Google after that set fails you.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#5Ffmpeg is an unusual piece of software. It’s CLI arguments (to me) are baffling. But it’s been around so long that there’s so many answered questions online for virtually anything you want it to do. Don’t bother reading the man page, go to google first.
Ridiculously useful piece of software, but yeah the docs baffle me more than help me.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#6Ffmpeg is an unusual piece of software. It’s CLI arguments (to me) are baffling. But it’s been around so long that there’s so many answered questions online for virtually anything you want it to do. Don’t bother reading the man page, go to google first.
Its cli became so complex to account for all its use cases which could have been replaced by a config file at this point.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#7I remember reading about it initially and saying "that sounds ambitious,and useful"... I think its safe to say they changed the world for the better with that single A/V swiss army knife tool. Amazing achievement.
I remember in the 90s when Microsoft, Apple and RealNetworks pushed hard for their own codecs and tools. IMHO those where dark times for digital video. ffmpeg and Xiph.org played a large part in changing that.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#8The creator of ffmpeg Fabrice Bellard(1) is truly a genius and has created so many amazing software that have been an amazing benefit to the world.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#9Ffmpeg is an unusual piece of software. It’s CLI arguments (to me) are baffling. But it’s been around so long that there’s so many answered questions online for virtually anything you want it to do. Don’t bother reading the man page, go to google first.
Its cli became so complex to account for all its use cases which could have been replaced by a config file at this point.
A config file makes sense if every run takes the same config. But most ffmpeg options are specific to a task and inapplicable to many others.
Re: FFmpeg is 20 years old today
#10Some might have commented that FFmpeg is a very complex software but in its defence codecs are complex - especially in the encoding side where you basically have the whole control on the parameters. If you somehow work at a media company (on the engineering side, not the creative side which usually does not know (and care) what is the difference between P and B frames) the switches are important especially in one-way broadcasting (where there is no way to basically go backward and you need to fit everything into a very constrained transmission, which as one of my friends say that engineers at YouTube has a much more easier job due to the two-way communication nature of the internet).