FFMpegCore/README.md

FFMpegCore

Setup

NuGet:

Install-Package FFMpegCore

A great way to use FFMpeg encoding when writing video applications, client-side and server-side. It has wrapper methods that allow conversion to popular web formats, such as Mp4, WebM, Ogv, TS, and methods for capturing screenshots from videos, among other.

API

FFProbe

FFProbe is used to gather media information:

var mediaInfo = FFProbe.Analyse(inputFile);

or

var mediaInfo = await FFProbe.AnalyseAsync(inputFile);

FFMpeg

FFMpeg is used for converting your media files to web ready formats. Easily build your FFMpeg arguments using the fluent argument builder:

Convert input file to h264/aac scaled to 720p w/ faststart, for web playback

FFMpegArguments
    .FromInputFiles(inputFilePath)
    .WithVideoCodec(VideoCodec.LibX264)
    .WithConstantRateFactor(21)
    .WithAudioCodec(AudioCodec.Aac)
    .WithVariableBitrate(4)
    .WithFastStart()
    .Scale(VideoSize.Hd)
    .OutputToFile(output)
    .ProcessSynchronously(),

Easily capture screens from your videos:

var mediaFileAnalysis = FFProbe.Analyse(inputFilePath);

// process the snapshot in-memory and use the Bitmap directly
var bitmap = FFMpeg.Snapshot(mediaFileAnalysis, new Size(200, 400), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1));

// or persists the image on the drive
FFMpeg.Snapshot(mediaFileAnalysis, outputPath, new Size(200, 400), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1))

Convert to and/or from streams

await FFMpegArguments
    .FromPipe(new StreamPipeDataWriter(inputStream))
    .WithVideoCodec("vp9")
    .ForceFormat("webm")
    .OutputToPipe(new StreamPipeDataReader(outputStream))
    .ProcessAsynchronously();

Join video parts into one single file:

FFMpeg.Join(@"..\joined_video.mp4",
    @"..\part1.mp4",
    @"..\part2.mp4",
    @"..\part3.mp4"
);

Join images into a video:

FFMpeg.JoinImageSequence(@"..\joined_video.mp4", frameRate: 1,
    ImageInfo.FromPath(@"..\1.png"),
    ImageInfo.FromPath(@"..\2.png"),
    ImageInfo.FromPath(@"..\3.png")
);

Mute videos:

FFMpeg.Mute(inputFilePath, outputFilePath);

Save audio track from video:

FFMpeg.ExtractAudio(inputVideoFilePath, outputAudioFilePath);

Add or replace audio track on video:

FFMpeg.ReplaceAudio(inputVideoFilePath, inputAudioFilePath, outputVideoFilePath);

Add poster image to audio file (good for youtube videos):

FFMpeg.PosterWithAudio(inputImageFilePath, inputAudioFilePath, outputVideoFilePath);
// or
var image = Image.FromFile(inputImageFile);
image.AddAudio(inputAudioFilePath, outputVideoFilePath);

Other available arguments could be found in FFMpegCore.Arguments namespace.

Input piping

With input piping it is possible to write video frames directly from program memory without saving them to jpeg or png and then passing path to input of ffmpeg. This feature also allows us to convert video on-the-fly while frames are being generated or received.

The IPipeSource interface is used as the source of data. It could be represented as encoded video stream or raw frames stream. Currently, the IPipeSource interface has single implementation, RawVideoPipeSource that is used for raw stream encoding.

For example:

Method that is generating bitmap frames:

IEnumerable<IVideoFrame> CreateFrames(int count)
{
    for(int i = 0; i < count; i++)
    {
        yield return GetNextFrame(); //method of generating new frames
    }
}

Then create ArgumentsContainer with InputPipeArgument

var videoFramesSource = new RawVideoPipeSource(CreateFrames(64)) //pass IEnumerable<IVideoFrame> or IEnumerator<IVideoFrame> to constructor of RawVideoPipeSource
{
    FrameRate = 30 //set source frame rate
};
FFMpegArguments
    .FromPipe(videoFramesSource)
    // ... other encoding arguments
    .OutputToFile("temporary.mp4")
    .ProcessSynchronously();

if you want to use System.Drawing.Bitmap as IVideoFrame, there is a BitmapVideoFrameWrapper wrapper class.

Binaries

If you prefer to manually download them, visit ffbinaries or zeranoe Windows builds.

Windows

command: choco install ffmpeg -Y

location: C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\ffmpeg\tools\ffmpeg\bin

Mac OSX

command: brew install ffmpeg mono-libgdiplus

location: /usr/local/bin

Ubuntu

command: sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg libgdiplus

location: /usr/bin

Path Configuration

Behavior

If you wish to support multiple client processor architectures, you can do so by creating a folder x64 and x86 in the root directory. Both folders should contain the binaries (ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe) for build for the respective architectures.

By doing so, the library will attempt to use either /root/{ARCH}/(ffmpeg|ffprobe).exe.

If these folders are not defined, it will try to find the binaries in /root/(ffmpeg|ffprobe.exe)

Option 1

The default value (\\FFMPEG\\bin) can be overwritten via the FFMpegOptions class:

public Startup() 
{
    FFMpegOptions.Configure(new FFMpegOptions { RootDirectory = "./bin", TempDirectory = "/tmp" });
}

Option 2

The root and temp directory for the ffmpeg binaries can be configured via the ffmpeg.config.json file.

{
  "RootDirectory": "./bin",
  "TempDirectory": "/tmp"
}

Compatibility

Some versions of FFMPEG might not have the same argument schema. The lib has been tested with version 3.3 to 4.2

Contributors

License

Copyright © 2020

Released under MIT license