#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet

Jean-Baptiste Kempf is lead developer of VLC and president of VideoLAN. Kieran Kunhya is a longtime FFmpeg contributor, codec engineer, and the person behind the now-infamous FFmpeg account on X.

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Transcript:

lexfridman.com/ffmpeg-transcript

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EPISODE LINKS:

FFmpeg on X: x.com/FFmpeg

FFmpeg: ffmpeg.org

VideoLAN (VLC): videolan.org

VideoLAN on X: x.com/videolan

Jean-Baptiste’s Website: jbkempf.com

Jean-Baptiste’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jbkempf

Jean-Baptiste’s GitHub: github.com/jbkempf

Kieran’s X: x.com/kierank_

Kieran’s LinkedIn: bit.ly/3OORhmC

Kieran’s GitHub: github.com/kierank

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OUTLINE:

(00:00) – Introduction

(03:00) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections

(10:48) – Weirdest things VLC opens

(15:12) – How video playback works

(24:33) – Video codecs and containers

(35:20) – FFmpeg explained

(56:20) – Linus Torvalds

(1:00:59) – Turning down millions to keep VLC ad-free

(1:15:17) – FFmpeg & Google drama

(1:34:31) – FFmpeg developers

(1:41:08) – VLC and FFmpeg

(1:45:42) – History of FFmpeg

(1:48:59) – Reverse engineering codecs

(2:02:14) – FFmpeg testing

(2:06:21) – Assembly code (handwritten)

(2:30:39) – Rust programming language

(2:39:55) – FFmpeg and Libav fork

(2:48:17) – Open source burnout

(2:56:04) – x264 and internet video

(3:09:20) – Video compression basics

(3:16:17) – CIA and fake VLC

(3:26:52) – Ultra low latency streaming

(3:44:20) – AV2 codec and video patents

(3:54:12) – VLC backdoors

(4:04:27) – Video archiving

(4:11:04) – Future of FFmpeg and VLC