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There are four types of coding: Data compression (or source coding) Error control (or channel coding) Cryptographic coding.
FFmpeg supports two AAC-LC encoders ( aac and libfdk_aac ) and one HE-AAC (v1/2) encoder ( libfdk_aac ). The license of libfdk_aac is not compatible with GPL, so the GPL does not permit distribution of binaries containing incompatible code when GPL-licensed code is also included.
A codec is a software that compresses your video so it can be stored and played back. The most common codec includes h. 264, which is often used for high-definition digital video and distribution of video content.
A codec based on the H. 264 standard compresses a digital video file (or stream) so that it only requires half of the storage space (or network bandwidth) of MPEG-2. Through this compression, the codec is able to maintain the same video quality despite using only half of the storage space.
Codecs proper:
ffmpeg -codecs
Formats:
ffmpeg -formats
The formats and codecs supported by your build of ffmpeg can vary due the version, how it was compiled, and if any external libraries, such as libx264, were supported during compilation.
List all formats:
ffmpeg -formats
Display options specific to, and information about, a particular muxer:
ffmpeg -h muxer=matroska
Display options specific to, and information about, a particular demuxer:
ffmpeg -h demuxer=gif
List all codecs:
ffmpeg -codecs
List all encoders:
ffmpeg -encoders
List all decoders:
ffmpeg -decoders
Display options specific to, and information about, a particular encoder:
ffmpeg -h encoder=mpeg4
Display options specific to, and information about, a particular decoder:
ffmpeg -h decoder=aac
There is a key near the top of the output that describes each letter that precedes the name of the format, encoder, decoder, or codec:
$ ffmpeg -encoders
[…]
Encoders:
V..... = Video
A..... = Audio
S..... = Subtitle
.F.... = Frame-level multithreading
..S... = Slice-level multithreading
...X.. = Codec is experimental
....B. = Supports draw_horiz_band
.....D = Supports direct rendering method 1
------
[…]
V.S... mpeg4 MPEG-4 part 2
In this example V.S... indicates that the encoder mpeg4 is a Video encoder and supports Slice-level multithreading.
What is a codec and how does it differ from a format?
ffmpeg -codecs
should give you all the info about the codecs available.
You will see some letters next to the codecs:
Codecs:
D..... = Decoding supported
.E.... = Encoding supported
..V... = Video codec
..A... = Audio codec
..S... = Subtitle codec
...I.. = Intra frame-only codec
....L. = Lossy compression
.....S = Lossless compression
You can see the list of supported codecs in the official documentation:
Supported video codecs
Supported audio codecs
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