FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams.

At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing video and audio files.

[11] The project was started by Fabrice Bellard[11] (using the pseudonym "Gérard Lantau") in 2000, and was led by Michael Niedermayer from 2004 until 2015.

[13] The logo represents a zigzag scan pattern that shows how MPEG video codecs handle entropy encoding.

[18][19][20] On January 10, 2014, two Google employees announced that over 1000 bugs had been fixed in FFmpeg during the previous two years by means of fuzz testing.

[25] In summer 2010, FFmpeg developers Fiona Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad, announced the ffvp8 decoder.

FFmpeg 3.0 (nicknamed "Einstein") retained build support for the Fraunhofer FDK AAC encoder.

[33][34] FFmpeg encompasses software implementations of video and audio compressing and decompressing algorithms.

These can be compiled and run on many different instruction sets, including x86 (IA-32 and x86-64), PPC (PowerPC), ARM, DEC Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS.

Depending on the environment, these APIs may lead to specific ASICs, to GPGPU routines, or to SIMD CPU code.

FFmpeg is used by software such as Blender, Cinelerra-GG Infinity, HandBrake, Kodi, MPC-HC, Plex, Shotcut, VirtualDub2 (a VirtualDub fork),[74] VLC media player, xine and YouTube.