FFmpeg

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Resources

FFmpeg is a cross platform, free, open source media encoder/decoder toolkit. It contains the programs and libraries necessary to convert audio and video into a wide range of formats. FFmpeg was written by Fabrice Bellard (creator of QEMU and BPG).

Installation

USE flags

Some packages know the ffmpeg USE flag for enabling ffmpeg/libav-based audio/video codec support.

USE flags for media-video/ffmpeg Complete solution to record/convert/stream audio and video. Includes libavcodec

`+bzip2`	Enable bzip2 compression support
`+dav1d`	Enables AV1 decoding via media-libs/dav1d.
`+encode`	Add support for encoding of audio or video files
`+gnutls`	Prefer net-libs/gnutls as SSL/TLS provider (ineffective with USE=-ssl)
`+gpl`	Build GPL code. Should be enabled unless you require LGPL binaries.
`+iconv`	Enable support for the iconv character set conversion library
`+network`	Enables network streaming support
`+pic`	Force shared libraries to be built as PIC (this is slower)
`+postproc`	Build and install libpostproc.
`+threads`	Add threads support for various packages. Usually pthreads
`+zlib`	Add support for zlib compression
`X`	Add support for X11
`alsa`	Add support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
`amf`	Enables support for AMD's Advanced Media Framework (AMF)
`amr`	Enables Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio support
`amrenc`	Enables Adaptive Multi-Rate Audio encoding support with media-libs/vo-amrwbenc.
`appkit`	Enables Apple AppKit framework
`bluray`	Enable playback of Blu-ray filesystems
`bs2b`	Enables media-libs/libbs2b based Bauer stereo-to-binaural filter.
`cdio`	Enables audio CD grabbing with dev-libs/libcdio.
`chromaprint`	Enables audio fingerprinting support with media-libs/chromaprint.
`chromium`	Builds libffmpeg.so to enable media playback in Chromium-based browsers like Opera and Vivaldi.
`codec2`	Enables codec2 low bit rate speech codec support via media-libs/codec2.
`cpudetection`	Enables runtime CPU detection (useful for bindist, compatibility on other CPUs)
`cuda`	Enables CUDA-based acceleration. Mostly used for specific filters.
`debug`	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
`doc`	Add extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally
`fdk`	Use external fdk-aac library for AAC encoding
`flite`	Adds a text-to-speech filter based on app-accessibility/flite.
`fontconfig`	Support for configuring and customizing font access via media-libs/fontconfig
`frei0r`	Enable frei0r wrapping in libavfilter
`fribidi`	Enables fribidi support in the drawtext filter.
`gcrypt`	Enables gcrypt support: Needed for rtmp(t)e support if openssl, librtmp or gmp is not used.
`glslang`	Use dev-util/glslang to compile GLSL
`gme`	Enables support for media-libs/game-music-emu for playing various video game music formats.
`gmp`	Add support for dev-libs/gmp (GNU MP library)
`gsm`	Add support for the gsm lossy speech compression codec
`hardcoded-tables`	Use pre-calculated tables rather than calculating them on the fly. It results in an increase of approximately 15% in the size of libavcodec, the main library impacted by this change. It enables savings in table generation time, done once at codec initialization, since by hardcoding the tables, they do not need to be computed at runtime. However, the savings are often negligible (~100k cycles is a typical number) especially when amortized over the entire encoding/decoding operation. Improvements are being made to the runtime initialization, and so over time, this option will have an impact on fewer and fewer codecs.
`iec61883`	Support for FireWire DV/HDV input device using media-libs/libiec61883.
`ieee1394`	Enable FireWire/iLink IEEE1394 support (dv, camera, ...)
`jack`	Add support for the JACK Audio Connection Kit
`jpeg2k`	Support for JPEG 2000, a wavelet-based image compression format
`jpegxl`	Add JPEG XL image support
`kvazaar`	Enables media-libs/kvazaar based HEVC encoder.
`ladspa`	Enable the ability to support ladspa plugins
`lcms`	Enable ICC profile support via media-libs/lcms.
`libaom`	Enables media-libs/libaom based AV1 codec support.
`libaribb24`	Enables ARIB text and caption decoding via media-libs/aribb24.
`libass`	SRT/SSA/ASS (SubRip / SubStation Alpha) subtitle support
`libcaca`	Add support for colored ASCII-art graphics
`libdrm`	Enables x11-libs/libdrm support for better screen grabbing and hardware accelerated codecs.
`libdvdnav`	Uses media-libs/libdvdnav to enable DVD demuxing
`libdvdread`	Uses media-libs/libdvdread to enable DVD demuxing
`libilbc`	Enables iLBC de/encoding via media-libs/libilbc.
`liblc3`	Enables LC3 de/encoding via media-sound/liblc3.
`libplacebo`	Adds flexible GPU-accelerated processing filter based on media-libs/libplacebo.
`librtmp`	Enables Real Time Messaging Protocol using librtmp (media-video/rtmpdump) in addition to FFmpeg's native implementation.
`libsoxr`	Enables audio resampling through media-libs/soxr.
`libtesseract`	Enables the OCR filter via app-text/tesseract.
`libv4l`	Uses media-libs/libv4l for video4linux instead of direct calls. Adds support for more devices via the userspace library.
`libxml2`	Uses dev-libs/libxml2 to enable dash demuxing support.
`lv2`	Enables lv2 audio filter wrapper.
`lzma`	Support for LZMA compression algorithm
`mipsdspr1`	Enables MIPS DSP ASE R1 optimizations.
`mipsdspr2`	Enables MIPS DSP ASE R2 optimizations.
`mipsfpu`	Enables floating point MIPS optimizations.
`mmal`	Enables Multi-Media Abstraction Layer (MMAL) decoding support: Available e.g. on the Raspberry Pi.
`modplug`	Add libmodplug support for playing SoundTracker-style music files
`mp3`	Add support for reading mp3 files
`nvenc`	Add support for NVIDIA Encoder/Decoder (NVENC/NVDEC) API for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding on NVIDIA cards (requires x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers)
`openal`	Add support for the Open Audio Library
`opencl`	Enable OpenCL support (computation on GPU)
`opengl`	Add support for OpenGL (3D graphics)
`openh264`	Enables H.264 encoding suppoprt via media-libs/openh264.
`openssl`	Enables dev-libs/openssl support. Adds support for encrypted network protocols (TLS/HTTPS).
`opus`	Enable Opus audio codec support
`oss`	Add support for OSS (Open Sound System)
`pulseaudio`	Add sound server support via media-libs/libpulse (may be PulseAudio or PipeWire)
`qrcode`	Enables QR encode generation via media-gfx/qrencode
`qsv`	Enable Intel Quick Sync Video via media-libs/intel-mediasdk (ffmpeg versions older than, and including, 5.1) or media-libs/libvpl (ffmpeg version newer than 5.1).
`quirc`	Enables QR decoding via media-libs/quirc
`rav1e`	Enables AV1 encoding support via media-video/rav1e.
`rubberband`	Adds time-stretching and pitch-shifting audio filter based on media-libs/rubberband.
`samba`	Add support for SAMBA (Windows File and Printer sharing)
`sdl`	Add support for Simple Direct Layer (media library)
`shaderc`	Use media-libs/shaderc to compile GLSL
`snappy`	Enable app-arch/snappy support. Required for e.g. Vidvox Hap encoder.
`sndio`	Enable support for the media-sound/sndio backend
`soc`	Apply additional patches for efficient playback on some SoCs (e.g. ARM, RISC-V).
`speex`	Add support for the speex audio codec (used for speech)
`srt`	Enable support for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) via net-libs/srt
`ssh`	Enable SSH/sftp support via net-libs/libssh.
`static-libs`	Build static versions of dynamic libraries as well
`svg`	Add support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
`svt-av1`	Enables AV1 encoding support via media-libs/svt-av1.
`test`	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
`theora`	Add support for the Theora Video Compression Codec
`truetype`	Enables drawtext filter via media-libs/freetype and media-libs/harfbuzz.
`twolame`	Enables MP2 encoding via media-sound/twolame as an alternative to the internal encoder.
`v4l`	Enable support for video4linux (using linux-headers or userspace libv4l libraries)
`vaapi`	Enable Video Acceleration API for hardware decoding
`vdpau`	Enable the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix acceleration interface
`verify-sig`	Verify upstream signatures on distfiles
`vidstab`	Enables video stabilization filter using vid.stab library (media-libs/vidstab).
`vmaf`	Enables Netflix's perceptual video quality assessment filter using the library (media-libs/libvmaf).
`vorbis`	Add support for the OggVorbis audio codec
`vpx`	Enables VP8 and VP9 codec support using libvpx: Decoding does not require this to be enabled but libvpx can also be used for decoding; encoding requires this useflag to be enabled though.
`vulkan`	Add support for 3D graphics and computing via the Vulkan cross-platform API
`webp`	Add support for the WebP image format
`x264`	Enable h264 encoding using x264
`x265`	Enables HEVC encoding with media-libs/x265.
`xvid`	Add support for xvid.org's open-source mpeg-4 codec
`zeromq`	Enables net-libs/zeromq support with the zmq/azmq filters.
`zimg`	Enables media-libs/zimg based scale filter.
`zvbi`	Enables media-libs/zvbi based teletext decoder.

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2025-03-02 08:19 More information about USE flags

The above list is non-comprehensive. Use equery (part of app-portage/gentoolkit) to see all available flags:

user $equery uses media-video/ffmpeg

Emerge

If not already pulled in as a dependency of other packages, and after setting appropriate USE flags, emerge FFmpeg:

root #emerge --ask media-video/ffmpeg

Configuration

This section needs some help.

Usage

Media player (ffplay)

If built with USE=sdl, a command line media player called ffplay is available.

user $curl http://www.dradio.de/streaming/dlf_hq_ogg.m3u | xargs ffplay

For more information consult the following commands:

user $man 1 ffplay

user $ffplay -h

External resources