Using FFmpeg in net

Question

So I know its a fairly big challenge but I want to write a basic movie player converter in c  using the FFmpeg library  However  the first obstacle I need to overcome is wrapping the FFmpeg library in c   I ve downloaded ffmpeg but couldn t compile it on Windows  so I downloaded a precompiled version for me  Ok awesome  Then I started looking for C  wrappers   I have looked around and have found a few wrappers such as SharpFFmpeg  http   sourceforge net projects sharpffmpeg   and ffmpeg-sharp  http   code google com p ffmpeg-sharp    First of all  I wanted to use ffmpeg-sharp as its LGPL and SharpFFmpeg is GPL  However  it had quite a few compile errors  Turns out it was written for the mono compiler  I tried compiling it with mono but couldn t figure out how  I then started to manually fix the compiler errors myself  but came across a few scary ones and thought I d better leave those alone  So I gave up on ffmpeg-sharp   Then I looked at SharpFFmpeg and it looks like what I want  all the functions P Invoked for me  However its GPL  Both the AVCodec cs and AVFormat cs files look like ports of avcodec c and avformat c which I reckon I could port myself  Then not have to worry about licencing   But I want to get this right before I go ahead and start coding  Should I    Write my own C   library for interacting with ffmpeg  then have my C  program talk to the C   library in order to play convert videos etc    OR   Port avcodec h and avformat h  is that all i need   to c  by using a whole lot of DllImports and write it entirely in C     First of all consider that I m not great at C   as I rarely use it but I know enough to get around  The reason I m thinking  1 might be the better option is that most FFmpeg tutorials are in C   and I d also have more control over memory management than if I was to do it in c    What do you think  Also would you happen to have any useful links  perhaps a tutorial  for using FFmpeg

User · Answer

You can try a simple ffmpeg wrapper  NET from here   http   ivolo mit edu post Convert-Audio-Video-to-Any-Format-using-C aspx

User · Answer

A solution that is viable for both Linux and Windows is to just get used to using console ffmpeg in your code  I stack up threads  write a simple thread controller class  then you can easily make use of what ever functionality of ffmpeg you want to use   As an example  this contains sections use ffmpeg to create a thumbnail from a time that I specify   In the thread controller you have something like  List lt ThrdFfmpeg gt  threads   new List lt ThrdFfmpeg gt       Which is the list of threads that you are running  I make use of a timer to Pole these threads  you can also set up an event if Pole ing is not suitable for your application   In this case thw class Thrdffmpeg contains   public class ThrdFfmpeg       public FfmpegStuff ffm   get  set        public Thread thrd   get  set        FFmpegStuff contains the various ffmpeg functionality  thrd is obviously the thread   A property in FfmpegStuff is the class FilesToProcess  which is used to pass information to the called process  and receive information once the thread has stopped   public class FileToProcess       public int videoID   get  set        public string fname   get  set        public int durationSeconds   get  set        public List lt string gt  imgFiles   get  set        VideoID  I use a database  tells the threaded process which video to use taken from the database  fname is used in other parts of my functions that use FilesToProcess  but not used here  durationSeconds - is filled in by the threads that just collect video duration  imgFiles is used to return any thumbnails that were created   I do not want to get bogged down in my code when the purpose of this is to encourage the use of ffmpeg in easily controlled threads   Now we have our pieces we can add to our threads list  so in our controller we do something like           AddThread                     ThrdFfmpeg thrd          FileToProcess ftp           foreach FileToProcess ff in   dbhelper GetFileNames txtCategory Text                            make a thread for each             ftp   new FileToProcess                ftp   ff              ftp imgFiles   new List lt string gt                 thrd   new ThrdFfmpeg                thrd ffm   new FfmpegStuff                thrd ffm filetoprocess   ftp              thrd thrd   new    System Threading Thread thrd ffm CollectVideoLength              threads Add thrd                     if timerNotStarted               StartThreadTimer                Now Pole ing our threads becomes a simple task    private void timerThreads Tick object sender  EventArgs e                int runningCount   0          int finishedThreads   0          foreach ThrdFfmpeg thrd in threads                        switch  thrd thrd ThreadState                                case System Threading ThreadState Running                        runningCount       Note that you can still view data progress here        but remember that you must use your safety checks       here more than anywhere else in your code  make sure the data       is readable and of the right sort  before you read it                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState StopRequested                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState SuspendRequested                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState Background                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState Unstarted      Any threads that have been added but not yet started  start now                     thrd thrd Start                          runningCount                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState Stopped                        finishedThreads      You can now safely read the results  in this case the      data contained in FilesToProcess      Such as                     ThumbnailsReadyEvent  thrd ffm                        break                  case System Threading ThreadState WaitSleepJoin                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState Suspended                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState AbortRequested                      break                  case System Threading ThreadState Aborted                      break                  default                      break                                    if flash             just a simple indicator so that I can see            that at least one thread is still running             lbThreadStatus BackColor   Color White              flash   false                    else                       lbThreadStatus BackColor   this BackColor              flash   true                    if finishedThreads  gt   threads Count                           StopThreadTimer                ShowSample                MakeJoinedThumb                      Putting your own events onto into the controller class works well  but in video work  when my own code is not actually doing any of the video file processing  poling then invoking an event in the controlling class works just as well   Using this method I have slowly built up just about every video and stills function I think I will ever use  all contained in the one class  and that class as a text file is useable on the Lunux and Windows version  with just a small number of pre-process directives

User · Answer

a few other managed wrappers for you to check out   FFMpeg NET FFMpeg-Sharp   Writing your own interop wrappers can be a time-consuming and difficult process in  NET  There are some advantages to writing a C   library for the interop - particularly as it allows you to greatly simplify the interface that the C  code  However  if you are only needing a subset of the library  it might make your life easier to just do the interop in C

User · Answer

You can use this nuget package   Install-Package Xabe FFmpeg   I m trying to make easy to use  cross-platform FFmpeg wrapper   You can find more information about this at Xabe FFmpeg  More info in documentation  Conversion is simple   IConversionResult result   await Conversion ToMp4 Resources MkvWithAudio  output  Start

User · Answer

The original question is now more than 5 years old  In the meantime there is now a solution for a WinRT solution from ffmpeg and an integration sample from Microsoft

User · Answer

GPL-compiled ffmpeg can be used from non-GPL program  commercial project  only if it is invoked in the separate process as command line utility  all wrappers that are linked with ffmpeg library  including Microsoft s FFMpegInterop  can use only LGPL build of ffmpeg   You may try my  NET wrapper for FFMpeg  Video Converter for  NET  I m an author of this library   It embeds FFMpeg exe into the DLL for easy deployment and doesn t break GPL rules  FFMpeg is NOT linked and wrapper invokes it in the separate process with System Diagnostics Process

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