An Interview With the Developers of FFmpeg

An anonymous reader writes "Following the long-awaited release of FFmpeg 0.5, Phoronix has conducted an interview with three FFmpeg developers (Diego Biurrun, Baptiste Coudurier, and Robert Swain) about this project's recent release. In this interview they talk about moving to a 3/6-month release cycle, the criteria for version 1.0, Blu-Ray support on Linux, OpenCL and GPGPU acceleration, multi-threading FFmpeg, video APIs, their own video codecs, and legal challenges they have run into."

Whither Google?

[negatonium]

They say they have trouble implementing code due to time and motivational constraints. Seems to me that if Google/YouTube has built a very successful website around the FFmpeg engine then Google ought to pony up some programming help with improving the project. Wouldn't that be "The right thing to do" (TM)?

Re:Long Awaited?

[CannonballHead]

It's the "complete" part of that word that is the key one. I dare say that no software is ever going to be "perfect" ... or, for that matter, "complete" in the ultimate sense of the word. However, I'm guessing they have a list of functionality that they want to implement before they declare it to be FFmpeg 1.0; fulfilling their list of desired functionality makes it "complete."

Re:Long Awaited?

[__aapspi39]

It's a bit more than a codec library - without it you probably wouldn't have Youtube or VLC, as well as countless other online and offline applications.

No one would expect you to be grateful, but you might want to demonstrate some knowledge of a domain you're so quick to pass comment on.

Re:Long Awaited?

[bradgoodman]

It's neither "just another", nor a "codec library".

First, it is (arguably) the best out there.

Second, it is an extremely powerful, cross-platform transcoder for every format under the sun.

Third, it is an extremely diverse media player (mplayer)

Fouth, it is the bassis for a countless number of media player and transcoding projects.

As someone who manipulates digital video on both a person and professional level, ffmpeg is the #1 tool in my arsenal.

Congrats on 0.5!!!

Re:Long Awaited?

[mhall119]

ffmpeg is to video, what imagemagick is to images.

Re:Long Awaited?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, said dumbass AC just doesn't know the difference between FFmpeg and ffdshow(-tryouts). And even that hasn't caused much trouble in the last few years, and if everything else fails you can just whitelist it to the few media players you want to use it in...