1. Muxers

Muxers are configured elements in Libav which allow writing multimedia streams to a particular type of file.

When you configure your Libav build, all the supported muxers are enabled by default. You can list all available muxers using the configure option --list-muxers.

You can disable all the muxers with the configure option --disable-muxers and selectively enable / disable single muxers with the options --enable-muxer=MUXER / --disable-muxer=MUXER.

The option -formats of the ff* tools will display the list of enabled muxers.

A description of some of the currently available muxers follows.

1.1 crc

CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) testing format.

This muxer computes and prints the Adler-32 CRC of all the input audio and video frames. By default audio frames are converted to signed 16-bit raw audio and video frames to raw video before computing the CRC.

The output of the muxer consists of a single line of the form: CRC=0xCRC, where CRC is a hexadecimal number 0-padded to 8 digits containing the CRC for all the decoded input frames.

For example to compute the CRC of the input, and store it in the file ‘out.crc’:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f crc out.crc

You can print the CRC to stdout with the command:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f crc -

You can select the output format of each frame with ‘ffmpeg’ by specifying the audio and video codec and format. For example to compute the CRC of the input audio converted to PCM unsigned 8-bit and the input video converted to MPEG-2 video, use the command:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -acodec pcm_u8 -vcodec mpeg2video -f crc -

See also the framecrc muxer (see framecrc).

1.2 framecrc

Per-frame CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) testing format.

This muxer computes and prints the Adler-32 CRC for each decoded audio and video frame. By default audio frames are converted to signed 16-bit raw audio and video frames to raw video before computing the CRC.

The output of the muxer consists of a line for each audio and video frame of the form: stream_index, frame_dts, frame_size, 0xCRC, where CRC is a hexadecimal number 0-padded to 8 digits containing the CRC of the decoded frame.

For example to compute the CRC of each decoded frame in the input, and store it in the file ‘out.crc’:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f framecrc out.crc

You can print the CRC of each decoded frame to stdout with the command:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f framecrc -

You can select the output format of each frame with ‘ffmpeg’ by specifying the audio and video codec and format. For example, to compute the CRC of each decoded input audio frame converted to PCM unsigned 8-bit and of each decoded input video frame converted to MPEG-2 video, use the command:

 
ffmpeg -i INPUT -acodec pcm_u8 -vcodec mpeg2video -f framecrc -

See also the crc muxer (see crc).

1.3 image2

Image file muxer.

The image file muxer writes video frames to image files.

The output filenames are specified by a pattern, which can be used to produce sequentially numbered series of files. The pattern may contain the string "%d" or "%0Nd", this string specifies the position of the characters representing a numbering in the filenames. If the form "%0Nd" is used, the string representing the number in each filename is 0-padded to N digits. The literal character ’%’ can be specified in the pattern with the string "%%".

If the pattern contains "%d" or "%0Nd", the first filename of the file list specified will contain the number 1, all the following numbers will be sequential.

The pattern may contain a suffix which is used to automatically determine the format of the image files to write.

For example the pattern "img-%03d.bmp" will specify a sequence of filenames of the form ‘img-001.bmp’, ‘img-002.bmp’, ..., ‘img-010.bmp’, etc. The pattern "img%%-%d.jpg" will specify a sequence of filenames of the form ‘img%-1.jpg’, ‘img%-2.jpg’, ..., ‘img%-10.jpg’, etc.

The following example shows how to use ‘ffmpeg’ for creating a sequence of files ‘img-001.jpeg’, ‘img-002.jpeg’, ..., taking one image every second from the input video:

 
ffmpeg -i in.avi -r 1 -f image2 'img-%03d.jpeg'

Note that with ‘ffmpeg’, if the format is not specified with the -f option and the output filename specifies an image file format, the image2 muxer is automatically selected, so the previous command can be written as:

 
ffmpeg -i in.avi -r 1 'img-%03d.jpeg'

Note also that the pattern must not necessarily contain "%d" or "%0Nd", for example to create a single image file ‘img.jpeg’ from the input video you can employ the command:

 
ffmpeg -i in.avi -f image2 -vframes 1 img.jpeg

1.4 mpegts

MPEG transport stream muxer.

This muxer implements ISO 13818-1 and part of ETSI EN 300 468.

The muxer options are:

-mpegts_original_network_id number

Set the original_network_id (default 0x0001). This is unique identifier of a network in DVB. Its main use is in the unique identification of a service through the path Original_Network_ID, Transport_Stream_ID.

-mpegts_transport_stream_id number

Set the transport_stream_id (default 0x0001). This identifies a transponder in DVB.

-mpegts_service_id number

Set the service_id (default 0x0001) also known as program in DVB.

-mpegts_pmt_start_pid number

Set the first PID for PMT (default 0x1000, max 0x1f00).

-mpegts_start_pid number

Set the first PID for data packets (default 0x0100, max 0x0f00).

The recognized metadata settings in mpegts muxer are service_provider and service_name. If they are not set the default for service_provider is "Libav" and the default for service_name is "Service01".

 
ffmpeg -i file.mpg -acodec copy -vcodec copy \
     -mpegts_original_network_id 0x1122 \
     -mpegts_transport_stream_id 0x3344 \
     -mpegts_service_id 0x5566 \
     -mpegts_pmt_start_pid 0x1500 \
     -mpegts_start_pid 0x150 \
     -metadata service_provider="Some provider" \
     -metadata service_name="Some Channel" \
     -y out.ts

1.5 null

Null muxer.

This muxer does not generate any output file, it is mainly useful for testing or benchmarking purposes.

For example to benchmark decoding with ‘ffmpeg’ you can use the command:

 
ffmpeg -benchmark -i INPUT -f null out.null

Note that the above command does not read or write the ‘out.null’ file, but specifying the output file is required by the ‘ffmpeg’ syntax.

Alternatively you can write the command as:

 
ffmpeg -benchmark -i INPUT -f null -

1.6 matroska

Matroska container muxer.

This muxer implements the matroska and webm container specs.

The recognized metadata settings in this muxer are:

title=title name

Name provided to a single track

language=language name

Specifies the language of the track in the Matroska languages form

STEREO_MODE=mode

Stereo 3D video layout of two views in a single video track

mono

video is not stereo

left_right

Both views are arranged side by side, Left-eye view is on the left

bottom_top

Both views are arranged in top-bottom orientation, Left-eye view is at bottom

top_bottom

Both views are arranged in top-bottom orientation, Left-eye view is on top

checkerboard_rl

Each view is arranged in a checkerboard interleaved pattern, Left-eye view being first

checkerboard_lr

Each view is arranged in a checkerboard interleaved pattern, Right-eye view being first

row_interleaved_rl

Each view is constituted by a row based interleaving, Right-eye view is first row

row_interleaved_lr

Each view is constituted by a row based interleaving, Left-eye view is first row

col_interleaved_rl

Both views are arranged in a column based interleaving manner, Right-eye view is first column

col_interleaved_lr

Both views are arranged in a column based interleaving manner, Left-eye view is first column

anaglyph_cyan_red

All frames are in anaglyph format viewable through red-cyan filters

right_left

Both views are arranged side by side, Right-eye view is on the left

anaglyph_green_magenta

All frames are in anaglyph format viewable through green-magenta filters

block_lr

Both eyes laced in one Block, Left-eye view is first

block_rl

Both eyes laced in one Block, Right-eye view is first

For example a 3D WebM clip can be created using the following command line:

 
ffmpeg -i sample_left_right_clip.mpg -an -vcodec libvpx -metadata STEREO_MODE=left_right -y stereo_clip.webm

This document was generated by mdx on February 3, 2021 using texi2html 1.82.