FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a library for encoding and decoding multimedia. You can interact with FFmpeg using their command-line interface or using their C API. I find it useful for converting videos to gifs. You can also extract videos into a sequence of images or vice-versa.

CLI

Basic usage is as follows:

ffmpeg -i input_file [-s resolution] [-b bitrate] [-ss start_second] [-t time] [-r output_framerate] output.mp4

x264

x264 is a software h264 decoder and encoder.
[1]

Changing Pixel Format

Encode to h264 with YUV420p pixel format

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

Images to Video

Reference
Assuming 60 images per second and you want a 30 fps video.

ffmpeg -framerate 60 -i image-%03d.png -r 30 video.mp4

C API

A doxygen reference manual for their C api is available at [2].

Muxing to memory

You can specify a custom AVIOContext and attach it to your AVFormatContext->pb to mux directly to memory or to implement your own buffering.

NVENC

Options Reference When encoding using NVENC, your codec_ctx->priv_data is a pointer to a NvencContext. To list all of the things you can set in the private data, you can type the following in bash

ffmpeg -hide_banner -h encoder=h264_nvenc

  if ((ret = av_hwdevice_ctx_create(&hw_device_ctx, AV_HWDEVICE_TYPE_CUDA, NULL,
                                    NULL, 0)) < 0) {
    cerr << "[VideoEncoder::VideoEncoder] Failed to create hw context" << endl;
    return;
  }

  if (!(codec = avcodec_find_encoder_by_name("h264_nvenc"))) {
    cerr << "[VideoEncoder::VideoEncoder] Failed to find h264_nvenc encoder"
         << endl;
    return;
  }
  codec_ctx = avcodec_alloc_context3(codec);
  codec_ctx->bit_rate = 2500000;
  codec_ctx->width = source_codec_ctx->width;
  codec_ctx->height = source_codec_ctx->height;
  codec_ctx->codec_type = AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO;
  codec_ctx->time_base = source_codec_ctx->time_base;
  input_timebase = source_codec_ctx->time_base;
  codec_ctx->framerate = source_codec_ctx->framerate;
  codec_ctx->pix_fmt = AV_PIX_FMT_CUDA;
  codec_ctx->profile = FF_PROFILE_H264_CONSTRAINED_BASELINE;
  codec_ctx->max_b_frames = 0;
  codec_ctx->delay = 0;
  codec_ctx->gop_size = 0;
// Todo: figure out which ones of these do nothing
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "cq", "23", AV_OPT_SEARCH_CHILDREN);
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "preset", "llhp", 0);
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "tune", "zerolatency", 0);
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "look_ahead", "0", 0);
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "zerolatency", "1", 0);
  av_opt_set(codec_ctx->priv_data, "nb_surfaces", "0", 0);