FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free and open-source multimedia framework that provides tools and libraries for handling video and audio data. It includes a suite of libraries, such as libavcodec for encoding and decoding, libavformat for container formats, libavfilter for processing, libavdevice for input and output devices, libswresample for audio resampling, and libswscale for image scaling. The project also ships with several command-line programs, most notably ffmpeg (a versatile media converter), ffprobe (a media metadata extractor), and ffplay (a simple media player). FFmpeg is used to convert, transcode, stream, and manipulate media in a wide range of formats.

The project originated in 2000 by Fabrice Bellard and has since become a foundational tool in video production, broadcasting, and software development. In 2011, a fork led to the Libav project, but FFmpeg remained the more widely adopted implementation, with both projects continuing to evolve.

FFmpeg supports an extensive set of codecs and containers, supports streaming and network protocols, and provides filtering capabilities such as scaling, cropping, and color space conversion. It is cross-platform, running on Linux, Windows, macOS, and many other systems. The software is released under a dual license: the libraries are primarily LGPL, with parts of the toolchain available under GPL, depending on configuration and linked components.