libavcodec is a free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

/open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 LGPL

GNU Lesser General Public License

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...

-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. Same name but incompatible libraries are provided from both FFmpeg

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...

 project and Libav project.

libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPlayer

MPlayer

MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...

, xine

Xine

xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library that supports different frontend player applications. Another important feature of xine is the ability to manually correct the synchronization...

 and VLC

VLC media player

VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...

 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

Ffdshow

ffdshow is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP and AVC formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well...

 tryouts decoder as its primary decoding library. libavcodec is also used in video editing and transcoding applications like Avidemux

Avidemux

Avidemux is a free and open-source video editing program designed for video editing and video processing. It is written in C++, and uses either the GTK+ or Qt.- Features :...

, MEncoder

MEncoder

MEncoder is a free command line video decoding, encoding and filtering tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a close sibling to MPlayer and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using different codecs.MEncoder...

 or Kdenlive

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is an open source video editing software package based on the MLT Framework that focuses on flexibility and ease of use...

 for both decoding and encoding.

libavcodec is particular in that it contains decoder and sometimes encoder implementations of several proprietary formats, including ones for which no public specification has been released. This reverse engineering

Reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...

 effort is thus a significant 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

Portability

Portability may refer to:*Portability , the portability of social security benefits*Software portability, the portability of a piece of software to multiple platforms...

, and in some cases also better performance, since libavcodec contains a standard library of highly optimized implementations of common building blocks, such as DCT

Discrete cosine transform

A discrete cosine transform expresses a sequence of finitely many data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies. DCTs are important to numerous applications in science and engineering, from lossy compression of audio and images A discrete cosine transform...

 and color space conversion

Color space

A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components...

. 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:

• Asus v1
• Asus v2
• AVS
  Audio Video Standard
  Audio Video Standard is a compression standard for digital audio and video, and is competing with H.264/AAC to potentially replace MPEG-2. Chinese companies own 90% of AVS patents. The audio and video files have an .avs extension as a container format.-Overview:Development of AVS was initiated by...
  
   (decoding only)
• CamStudio
  CamStudio
  CamStudio is a screencasting program for Microsoft Windows released as free software. The software renders videos in an AVI format. It can also convert these AVIs into Flash Video format, embedded in SWF files...
  
   (decoding only)
• Cinepak
  Cinepak
  Cinepak is a video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. It was designed to encode 320x240 resolution video at 1x CD-ROM transfer rates. The codec was ported to the...
  
   (decoding only)
• Creative
  Creative Technology
  Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
  
   YUV (CYUV, decoding only)
• Dirac (decoding only)
• DNxHD
  DNxHD codec
  Avid DNxHD, which stands for "Digital Nonlinear Extensible High Definition", is a lossy high-definition video post-production codec engineered for multi-generation compositing with reduced storage and bandwidth requirements. It is an implementation of SMPTE VC-3 standard...
  
  
• Duck
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   TrueMotion
  TrueMotion
  On2 TrueMotion Video Compression is a series of video codecs created by On2 Technologies Inc..- History :According to the company itself, development started in the early 1990s. The first versions of the codec were mainly targeted at and used for full motion video scenes in computer games....
  
   v1 (decoding only)
• Duck
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   TrueMotion v2 (decoding only)
• Flash Screen Video
• FFV1
  FFV1
  FFV1, which stands for "FF video codec 1", is a lossless intra-frame video codec. It can use either variable length coding or arithmetic coding for entropy coding...
  
  
• H.261
  H.261
  H.261 is a ITU-T video coding standard, ratified in November 1988. It is the first member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group , and was the first video codec that was useful in practical terms.H.261 was originally designed for...
  
  
• H.263
  H.263
  H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bitrate compressed format for videoconferencing. It was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group in a project ending in 1995/1996 as one member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T.H.263...
  
  
• H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
  H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
  H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...
  
   (native decoder, encoding through x264
  X264
  x264 is a free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.-History:...
  
  )
• Huffyuv
  Huffyuv
  Huffyuv is a lossless video codec created by Ben Rudiak-Gould which is meant to replace uncompressed YCbCr as a video capture format.Despite the "YUV" in the name, it does not compress the YUV color space, but YCbCr...
  
  
• id Software
  Id Software
  Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
  
   RoQ Video
• Intel Indeo
  Indeo
  Indeo Video is a video codec developed by Intel in 1992. It was sold to Ligos Corporation in 2000. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video stream format, a hardware-only codec for the compression of television-quality video onto compact disks, Indeo was distinguished by being...
  
   (decoding only)
• Lagarith
  Lagarith
  Lagarith is an open source lossless video codec written by Ben Greenwood. It was designed and written with a few aims in mind:Speed: while not as fast as Huffyuv, it still outperforms most other lossless video codecs when it comes to encoding times, although decoding speed may be slower...
  
   (decoding only)
• LOCO (decoding only)
• Mimic (decoding only)
• MJPEG
  MJPEG
  In multimedia, Motion JPEG is an informal name for a class of video formats where each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is separately compressed as a JPEG image...
  
  
• MPEG-1
  MPEG-1
  MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting possible.Today, MPEG-1 has become...
  
  
• MPEG-2
  MPEG-2
  MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
  
  /H.262
  H.262
  H.262 or MPEG-2 Part 2 is a digital video compression and encoding standard developed and maintained jointly by ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group . It is the second part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-2 standard...
  
  

• MPEG-4 Part 2
  MPEG-4 Part 2
  MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual is a video compression technology developed by MPEG. It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It is a discrete cosine transform compression standard, similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2...
  
   (the format used for example by the popular DivX
  DivX
  DivX is a brand name of products created by DivX, Inc. , including the DivX Codec which has become popular due to its ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.There are two DivX codecs; the regular MPEG-4 Part 2 DivX codec and the...
  
   and Xvid
  XviD
  Xvid is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile . It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.Xvid is a...
  
   codecs)
• On2
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   VP3
  VP3
  On2 TrueMotion VP3 is a lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies....
  
   (decoding only)
• On2
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   VP5
  VP5
  On2 TrueMotion VP5 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies.It was announced by On2 Technologies in February 2002...
  
   (decoding only)
• On2
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   VP6
  VP6
  On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Video, and JavaFX media files.- Overview :The VP6 codec...
  
   (decoding only)
• On2
  On2 Technologies
  On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...
  
   VP8
  VP8
  VP8 is an open video compression format released by Google, originally created by On2 Technologies.After purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010, Google has provided an irrevocable patent promise for underlying patents for the VP8 format, and released a bitstream format specification under a...
  
   (native decoder, encoding through libvpx)
• Apple ProRes
  ProRes 422
  ProRes 422 is a standard-definition and high-definition lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post production. It was introduced in 2007 with Final Cut Studio 2 and is comparable to Avid's DNxHD codec which has the same purpose and uses similar bit rates...
  
  
• Apple Computer
  Apple Computer
  Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
  
   QuickDraw
  QuickDraw
  QuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
  
   (decoding only)
• QuickTime
  QuickTime
  QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
  
   Graphics SMC
  SMC
  -Technology:* Secure multiparty computation, a cryptography problem* Secure Managed Client, a centrally managed discless solution for PCs* SMC connector, used in radio-frequency circuits* Sliding mode control* Self-modifying code* SmartMedia Card...
  
  
• RealVideo
  RealVideo
  RealVideo is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and is at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile...
  
   RV10 and RV20
• RealVideo RV30 and RV40 (decoding only)
• VC-1
  VC-1
  VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
  
   (decoding only)
• Smacker video
  Smacker video
  Smacker video is a video file format developed by RAD Game Tools and has been used in computer games. Smacker video supports 256 colors, and includes transparency support...
  
   (decoding only)
• Snow
• Sorenson SVQ1
• Sorenson SVQ3 (decoding only)
• Theora
  Theora
  Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....
  
   (native decoder, encoding through libtheora)
• Sierra
  Sierra Entertainment
  Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
  
   VMD Video (decoding only)
• VMware
  VMware
  VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary ....
  
   VMnc (decoding only)
• Westwood Studios
  Westwood Studios
  Westwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in as Westwood Associates, and renamed to Westwood Studios when it merged with Virgin Interactive in...
  
   VQA (decoding only)
• WMV
  Windows Media Video
  'Windows Media Video is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater...
  
   — version 7 and 8
• WMV
  Windows Media Video
  'Windows Media Video is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater...
  
   — version 9 (decoding only)
• Wing Commander/Xan Video (decoding only)

Implemented audio codecs

libavcodec includes decoders and encoders for the following formats:

• 8SVX
  8SVX
  8SVX is a subformat of the Interchange File Format. The subformat is for 8-bit sampled sounds, supports both mono and stereo streams as well as loops; commonly used as a basic audio sample format on Amiga computers for many years...
  
   (decoding only)
• AAC
  Advanced Audio Coding
  Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
  
  
• AC-3
• AMR (decoding only)
• AMR-WB (decoding only)
• Apple Lossless
  Apple Lossless
  Apple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...
  
  
• ATRAC3 (decoding only)
• Cook Codec
  Cook Codec
  The cook codec is a lossy audio compression codec developed by RealNetworks. It is also known as Cooker, Gecko, RealAudio G2, and RealAudio 8 low bitrate ....
  
   (decoding only)
• DTS (encoder is highly experimental)
• EA ADPCM
  SimCity 3000
  SimCity 3000 is a city building simulation personal computer game and the third major installment in the SimCity series. It was published by Electronic Arts and developed by series creator Maxis, a wholly owned subsidiary of EA...
  
   (decoding only)
• E-AC-3
• FLAC
  FLAC
  FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
  
  
• GSM 06.10
  Full Rate
  Full Rate or FR or GSM-FR or GSM 06.10 was the first digital speech coding standard used in the GSM digital mobile phone system. The bit rate of the codec is 13 kbit/s, or 1.625 bits/audio sample...
  
   (native decoder, encoding through libgsm)
• Intel Music Coder (decoding only)
• Meridian Lossless Packing
  Meridian Lossless Packing
  Meridian Lossless Packing, also known as Packed PCM , is a proprietary lossless compression technique for compressing PCM audio data developed by Meridian Audio, Ltd. MLP is the standard lossless compression method for DVD-Audio content and typically provides about 1.5:1 compression on most music...
  
   / Dolby TrueHD
  Dolby TrueHD
  Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
  
   (decoding only)
• Monkey's Audio
  Monkey's Audio
  Monkey's Audio is a file format for audio data compression. Being a lossless format, Monkey's Audio does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as AAC, MP3, Vorbis and Musepack....
  
   (decoding only)
• MP2

• MP3
  MP3
  MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
  
   (native decoder, encoding through LAME
  LAME
  LAME is a free software codec used to encode/compress audio into the lossy MP3 file format.-History:The name LAME is a recursive acronym for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder". Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the "8Hz-MP3" encoder source code...
  
  )
• Nellymoser Asao Codec in Flash
• QCELP
  QCELP
  Qualcomm code-excited linear prediction , also known as Qualcomm PureVoice, is a speech codec developed in 1994 by Qualcomm to increase the speech quality of the IS-96A codec earlier used in CDMA networks. It was later replaced with EVRC since it provides better speech quality with fewer bits...
  
   (decoding only)
• QDM2
  QDesign
  QDesign is a music codec, originally known as LBpack, by Dmitry Shmunk. QDesign corporation bought the codec and hired the developer to create what would become the official audio compression in Apple Computer's QuickTime v3....
  
   (decoding only)
• RealAudio 1.0
• RealAudio 2.0 (decoding only)
• Shorten
  Shorten
  Shorten is a file format used for compressing audio data. It is a form of data compression of files and is used to losslessly compress CD-quality audio files . Shorten is no longer developed and more recent lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio , TTA, and WavPack have become more...
  
   (decoding only)
• Truespeech
  Truespeech
  Truespeech is a proprietary audio codec produced by the DSP Group. It is designed for encoding voice data at low bitrates, and to be embedded into DSP chips....
  
   (decoding only)
• TTA
  TTA (codec)
  True Audio is a free software, real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters.Also, .tta is the generic extension to filenames of audio files created by True Audio codec.- Codec overview :...
  
   (decoding only)
• TwinVQ
  TwinVQ
  TwinVQ is an audio compression technique developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation Human Interface Laboratories in 1994...
  
   (decoding only)
• Vorbis
  Vorbis
  Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
  
  
• WavPack
  WavPack
  WavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...
  
   (decoding only)
• Windows Media Audio 1
• Windows Media Audio 2
• Windows Media Audio 9 Professional (decoding only)
• Windows Media Audio Voice (decoding only)

Libraries that depend on libavcodec

• libavformat (part of FFmpeg
  FFmpeg
  FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...
  
  )
• libgegl (optional part of GEGL
  GEGL
  The Generic Graphics Library is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed for GIMP in order to bring support for higher bit depth images than GIMP currently supports, as well as non-destructive editing...
  
  )
  • libgimp (part of GIMP
    GIMP
    GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
    
    )
• libmpcodecs (part of MPlayer
  MPlayer
  MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...
  
  )
  • libmpdemux (part of MPlayer
    MPlayer
    MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...
    
    )

Video players

• GOM Player
  Gom player
  GOM Player is a 32-bit media player for Microsoft Windows, distributed by the Gretech Corporation of South Korea. It is alleged that Gretech distributes GOM Player in violation of copyright law....
  
   (Illegally)
• KMPlayer
• FFplay
  FFmpeg
  FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...
  
  
• MPlayer
  MPlayer
  MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS and MorphOS are also available. The Windows version works, with some minor...
  
  
• VLC
  VLC media player
  VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
  
  
• xine
  Xine
  xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library that supports different frontend player applications. Another important feature of xine is the ability to manually correct the synchronization...
  
  

Audio players

• Audacious
  Audacious Media Player
  Audacious is a free software audio player with a focus on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It is designed primarily for use on POSIX-compatible systems such as Linux, with limited support for Microsoft Windows...
  
   (Uses in audacious-plugins's ffaudio)
• Rockbox
  Rockbox
  Rockbox is a replacement for the standard firmware in various forms of digital audio players . It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the original firmware, which provides a plug-in architecture for adding various enhancements and functions...
  
   (Includes only FLAC code)
• XMMS2
  XMMS2
  XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...
  
  

Video editors

See also Comparison of video editing software

Comparison of video editing software

This is a comparison of non-linear video editing software applications. See also a more complete list of video editing software.-General information:This table gives basic general information about the different editors:- System requirements :...

• Avidemux
  Avidemux
  Avidemux is a free and open-source video editing program designed for video editing and video processing. It is written in C++, and uses either the GTK+ or Qt.- Features :...
  
  
• Cinelerra
  Cinelerra
  Cinelerra is prosumer video editing software. It is designed for the GNU/Linux operating system. It is produced by Heroine Virtual, and is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License...
  
  
• Kdenlive
  Kdenlive
  Kdenlive is an open source video editing software package based on the MLT Framework that focuses on flexibility and ease of use...
  
  
• Kino
  Kino (software)
  Kino is a free software GTK+-based video editing software for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The development of Kino was started at the end of 2000 by Dan Dennedy and Arne Schirmacher...
  
  

Video converters

• FFmpeg
  FFmpeg
  FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...
  
  
• HandBrake
  HandBrake
  HandBrake is a general-purpose, open-source, cross-platform, multithreaded video transcoder software application. HandBrake was originally developed by titer in 2003 as a general-purpose video transcoder to make ripping a film from a DVD to a data storage device easier...
  
  
• MEncoder
  MEncoder
  MEncoder is a free command line video decoding, encoding and filtering tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a close sibling to MPlayer and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using different codecs.MEncoder...
  
  
• SUPER
  SUPER (software)
  SUPER is a closed-source freeware front-end for open-source software video players and encoders provided by the FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, ffmpeg2theora, musepack, Monkey's Audio, True Audio, WavPack, libavcodec, and the Theora/Vorbis RealProducer plugIn projects...
  
  
• Transcode
  Transcode (software)
  Transcode is a free audio/video transcoder with a command-line interface for Unix-like operating systems. It uses FFmpeg's libavcodec library, and supports numerous formats . It also includes a variety of pre/post filters for denoising, deinterlacing, smoothing, sharpening, etc...
  
  
• ffmpeg2theora

Multimedia frameworks

• ffdshow
  Ffdshow
  ffdshow is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP and AVC formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well...
  
   (wraps libavcodec as a DirectShow
  DirectShow
  DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...
  
   filter and adds postprocessing to improve image quality; once installed, it is automatically used by all Windows DirectShow video players, such as Windows Media Player
  Windows Media Player
  Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
  
  , Media Player Classic
  Media Player Classic
  Media Player Classic is a compact media player for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows. The application mimics the look and feel of the old, lightweight Windows Media Player 6.4 but integrates most options and features found in modern media players...
  
  , Winamp
  Winamp
  Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
  
   etc. It also wraps libavcodec as a Video for Windows
  Video for Windows
  Video for Windows was a multimedia framework developed by Microsoft that allowed Microsoft Windows to play digital video.-Overview:...
  
   filter; the framework used by most video editing software.)
• GStreamer
  GStreamer
  GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework written in the C programming language with the type system based on GObject.GStreamer allows a programmer to create a variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming and editing...
  
   via the GStreamer FFmpeg plugin
• Perian
  Perian
  Perian is an open source QuickTime component that enables Apple Inc.’s QuickTime to play several popular video formats not supported natively by QuickTime on Mac OS X...
  
  
• Bellagio OpenMAX Integration Layer - opensource OpenMAX IL API implementation

API wrappers

• FFmpeg-Perl
• ffmpeg-php - wrapper for PHP
  PHP
  PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
  
  
• Jffmpeg - wrapper for Java
  Java (programming language)
  Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
  
  
• Xuggler - wrapper for Java
  Java (programming language)
  Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
  
  

CCTV

• ZoneMinder
  ZoneMinder
  ZoneMinder is a free, open source CCTV software application developed for Linux.It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License .-Feature List:*Runs on any Linux distribution supporting Video4Linux....
  
   - video camera security suite
• Motion
  Motion (surveillance software)
  Motion, a software motion detector, is a free, open source CCTV software application developed for Linux.It can monitor video signal from one or more cameras and is able to detect if a significant part of the picture has changed saving away video when it detects that motion is occurring .The...
  
   - video camera security/monitoring program

Game

• Performous - music game including singing, band and dance.
• StepMania
  StepMania
  StepMania is an open source and cross-platform rhythm video game and engine. It was originally developed as a simulator of Konami's arcade game series Dance Dance Revolution, and has since evolved into an extensible rhythm game engine capable of supporting a wide variety of rhythm-based game types...
  
  

Others

• AtGLas
• avifile
• Avview
• bbplay
• BeOS FFmpeg decoders
• BeOS HybridDivx
• Chameleo
  Chameleo
  Chameleo is a media platform with support for rich video playback. Chameleo is designed to make it easy to extend a media player with custom features through extensions and extensions points.-External links:* *...
  
  
• Chroma Player
• chronictv
• CorePlayer
• D-Volution
• DivXray
• DivXtoDVD
• Dr. Divx
• DreaMule (Uses a layer called "SimpleVLC")
• dvbcut

• Easy VOB 2 DivX
• ffmpegthumbnailer
• ffmpegX for Mac OS X
• ffmpegX Companion
• FFMPEG for QT
• FFRecord
• fftv
• Fobs
• FreeJ
  FreeJ
  FreeJ is a modular video mixer for GNU/Linux systems. It is marketed as a "vision mixer". It is capable of real-time video manipulation, for amateur and professional uses. It can be used as an instrument in the fields of dance theater, veejaying, medical visualisation and TV...
  
  
• gmerlin
• HTS (Home Theater System)
• Hyperion
  Hyperion
  -Computing:* Hyperion , an early portable computer* Hyperion Entertainment, a computer game producer* Hyperion Solutions, a business software company owned by Oracle* Hyperion, an IRC daemon previously used by the Freenode IRC network-In fiction:...
  
  
• Ingex Studio
  Ingex
  Ingex is an open-source suite of software for the digital capture of audio and video data, without the need for traditional audio or video tape or cassettes. Serial digital interface capture is supported, as well as real-time transcoding . Portions of the software suite also act as a network...
  
   - used by BBC
  BBC
  The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
  
  
• Internet DJ Console
• PulseAudio
  PulseAudio
  PulseAudio is a cross-platform, networked sound server commonly used on the Linux-based and FreeBSD operating systems.PulseAudio runs under Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and POSIX-compliant platforms, such as Linux and FreeBSD...
  
  - includes only resamplers code