ffmpeg-libav-tutorial

For anyone looking to dive deeper and actually understand how FFmpeg and libav work under the hood, I highly recommend Leandro Moreira's tutorial [0]. For me, it's hands down the best and most comprehensive explanation out there. [0] https://github.com/leandromoreira/ffmpeg-libav-tutorial

See also: * https://img.ly/blog/ultimate-guide-to-ffmpeg/ * https://ffmpeg.lav.io/ * https://github.com/leandromoreira/ffmpeg-libav-tutorial * https://www.hadet.dev/ffmpeg-cheatsheet/

This tutorial is very outdated, eg. `AVPicture`, which is used throughout, is completely deprecated and removed from the library, so you will simply encounter linker errors trying to follow this tutorial and will have to replace every `avpicture` call made in the tutorial. Also, `avcodec_decode_video2` is deprecated and you have to use `avcodec_send_packet` and `avcodec_receive_frame`. The FFmpeg libraries are possibly the worst thing I have ever worked with in my life. I have never been more afraid to use a library than this. FFmpeg libraries randomly break themselves, so if you find an answer from a few years ago, chances are it's useless. Want to free an AVPacket? `av_free_packet` is deprecated,. You can use `av_packet_unref` (but there's _also_ a function named `av_packet_free` that doesn't do quite the same thing). Most questions on

These resources helped me get started, although somewhat dated though. https://github.com/leandromoreira/ffmpeg-libav-tutorial http://dranger.com/ffmpeg/

Good overview of all the parts involved! I was hoping they’d talk a little more about the timing aspects, and keeping audio and video in sync during playback. What I’ve learned from working on a video editor is that “keeping a/v in sync” is… sort of a misnomer? Or anyway, it sounds very “active”, like you’d have to line up all the frames and carefully set timers to play them or something. But in practice, the audio and video frames are interleaved in the file, and they naturally come out in order (ish - see replies). The audio plays at a known rate (like 44.1KHz) and every frame of audio and video has a “presentation timestamp”, and these timestamps (are supposed to) line up between the streams. So you’ve got the audio and video both coming out of the file at way-faster-than-realtime (ideally), and then the syncing ends up being more like

I think you're supposed to read the header files? I have no idea how people write ffmpeg stuff. The only good tutorial I've seen is: https://github.com/leandromoreira/ffmpeg-libav-tutorial