Comment by 0xbeefcab

1 day ago

Yeah, basically anytime a video or audio is being recorded, played, or streamed its from ffmpeg. It runs on a couple planets [0], and on most devices (maybe?)

[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-020-00765-9

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0xbeefcab

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deaddodo  21 hours ago

FFMpeg is definitely fairly ubiquitous, but you are overstating its universality quite a bit. There are alternatives that utilize Windows/macOS's native media frameworks, proprietary software that utilizes bespoke frameworks, and libraries that function independently of ffmpeg that offer similar functionality.

That being said, if you put down a pie chart of media frameworks (especially for transcoding or muxing), ffmpeg would have a significant share of that pie.

neckro23  21 hours ago

Not necessarily. A lot of video software either leverages the Windows/MacOS system codecs (ex. Media Player Classic, Quicktime) or proprietary vendor codecs (Adobe/Blackmagic).

Linux doesn't really have a system codec API though so any Linux video software you see (ex. VLC, Handbrake) is almost certainly using ffmpeg under the hood (or its foundation, libavcodec).