FFmpeg: providing better alternative since 2000

Few days ago FFmpeg finally got WMA3 decoder. This event gives me an opportunity to look at our achievements.

  1. Popular and/or standard codecs — supported except for the newest stuff (AAC-HE[2], H.264 interlaced modes, VC-1 interlaced modes).
  2. Windows Media — WMV1-WMV3 are supported (except for beta version of WMV3 and other WMV3 spinoffs). WMA1-WMA3 is supported too. We still have WMA Lossless and WMA Voice to RE and our top men are working on it (did you remember “Raiders of the Ark” ending? Neither did I).
  3. Real Media — RV1-RV4 are supported, from the variety of audio codecs only Sipro and Real Lossless support are missing. Sipro is in the works and nobody (including RealNetworks itself) cares about RALF.
  4. Intel codecs — Indeo 1-3 is supported, patch for Indeo 4-5 is available, IMC is supported, IAC is not REd (and not in queue).
  5. RAD codecs — REd, there are still some issues with Bink to sort out before inclusion.
  6. AVI codecs — that’s a mess. There are simply too many very codecs and new ones still continue to appear. Some are supported, most are not.
  7. Lossless audio codecs — some are supported, some are not. Again, looks like everybody writes own lossless audio or video codec. I’d like to get support for TAK though.
  8. Game video codecs — we still have a lot of them to RE. Personally I want Discworld III video (BMV, but it differs from the format used in Discworld II) support. *sigh*

If you think there’s some codec we definitely should support, please tell us (preferably with specification or decoder sources 😉 If you just want to have some codec support in FFmpeg — make us interested in it, some codecs support appeared in FFmpeg after somebody had said “can play that file?”.

17 Responses to “FFmpeg: providing better alternative since 2000”

  1. Alex Converse says:

    Don’t forget about legacy QuickTime codecs like SVQ1/3 and QDM2. (Though QDMC is still missing, no?)

  2. n says:

    I dont know but RealVideo Fractal Codec (aka ClearVideo and SoftVideo) may be important
    http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=ClearVideo
    http://www.reference.com/browse/fractal+compression

  3. Vitor says:

    I’ve heard that Windows Media Screen Video 2 is pretty popular. There is also AMR-*, JPEG2000 and VP7.

    A nice list is http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=Category:Formats_missing_in_FFmpeg (and its subcategories).

  4. Carl Eugen Hoyos says:

    Don’t forget DTS-HD Master Audio – there is a dll now…

  5. Kostya says:

    @Alex: situation with QuickTime looks a lot like AVI.

    @n: never seen it in the wild. And available samples are AVIs.

    @Vitor: I’ll try to look at MSS1/2. As for the list itself – I’m aware of it and sometimes help to reduce it 😉

    @Carl: at least it can be played by DTS Core decoder, no?

  6. vu says:

    “icod” video codec please !!! used by many hd cameras / video cameras.

    sample: http://www.engadget.com/videos/zx1-bird-test.mov

    (from kodak zx1 – http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/26/kodak-zx1-unboxing-and-impressions/ )

  7. name says:

    “icod” is also used in new HD cameras by Panasonic and Sony. It’s quite common

  8. @Kostya: I don’t see any BMV samples (for any game) on the samples archive. Could you rectify that please?

  9. Kostya says:

    @Mike: two different samples in MPHQ/incoming/BMV

  10. Dawid says:

    http://code.google.com/p/amv-codec-tools/ – was that merged into ffmpeg? there is also another such formats used in china’s mp4 players – .mtv not ever supported in ffmpeg :/

  11. Ed says:

    Is there any way to make Rmvb decode faster?
    I have no problem with WMV files, but Rmvb, especially 720P files are choppy for some reason. Same files on Windows dont have this problem.

  12. Kostya says:

    Why not? Just SIMDify more functions. BUT IIRC our decoder was faster.

  13. harry says:

    hello there,

    I have video files that play ok with the video but not the audio. When I asked the uploader what to do he said download the :

    kodak wma3 audio file decoder.

    This way I will also get audio when i play the file as opposed to just getting the video only now.

    Can you recommend the code for wma3 kodak?

    thank you very much

    harry

  14. WMA Lossless support would be useful to us.

    Some labels will not deliver content in FLAC, but can provide WMA Lossless. Our present workaround is to have a drone Windoze box on the network to convert such files to FLAC, but it would be much easier if ffmpeg could convert these files to FLAC directly.

  15. n says:

    9. QuickTime codecs – that’s mess too. that seems to include many unregistered tags.
    http://www.mechodownload.com/forum/macintosh-programs/119899-45-new-quicklook-plugins-128-quicktime-plugins-Full-Free-Downloads-Keygen-Crack-Serial-Activator-Free-Hosts.html

    ‘adec’ = audio decoder, ‘imdc’ = video/image decoder, ‘eat ‘ = demuxer
    ‘aenc’ = audio encoder, ‘imco’ = video/image encoder, ‘spit’ = muxer

  16. compn says:

    i just want the old ones… mvi2 , vivo, qdmc, indeo5