Libav vs. ffmpeg - the differences?

[TorBru]

What are the differences between the Libav tools (avconv, avprobe, avplay) and the FFmpeg tools (ffmpeg, ffprobe, ffplay)? I cannot see any differences in their syntax and it seems like the only thing that differs are the developers behind.. Or what?

[poisondeathray]

Functionally no differences, both use the same code repositories. Sometimes one gets updated faster than another, that's it.

My understanding is that the division was from more of a developers "girl fight" - there were some personality differences and different ways of doing things between the developers.

[sophisticles]

My understanding is that the division was from more of a developers "girl fight" - there were some personality differences and different ways of doing things between the developers.

OOH, I see what you did there, DS always was a princess, even before he decided to Take a Walk on The Wild Side.

[TorBru]

Thought so.. Pretty irritating since I'm fiddeling with a port of FFQueue to Linux/Debian which seems to prefer libav over ffmpeg, bummer.. But if it's a question of simply replacing ff* with av* I'll get it sorted.. Somehow..

poisondeathray: Are you part of the ffmpeg or libav team? Seems like you know a grand canyon worth of stuff related to video encoding and ffmpeg..

[TorBru]

I've now (due to FFQueue development) had a bit of experience with both FFmpeg and Libav (avconv, avprobe & avplay) and it seems like there a quite a lot of differences and if anyone should be curious about this, here we go!

FFmpeg seems to be like a playground where all the features possible are implemented - even if they are experimental, unfinished or unstable. Livav seems to be a slimmed down version of FFmpeg where only the well-tested, final and stable features are implemented. Libav only supports a very limited amount of filtergraphs - like scaling and padding and such basic stuff, and some of the supported filters have fewer options than FFmpeg provides. Experimental or non-final codecs (like H.265) are not supported at all by Libav (yet).

Because of this it is not possible to use Libav as a substitute to FFmpeg. The fact is that only basic commands from FFmpeg are supported by Libav - advanced features are still unique to FFmpeg. So, if you would like a simple tool that is stable and not "bloated" with features Libav is your choice. If you want all the features (even if they might have their quirks) you should go with FFmpeg.

And by this my venture into Libav has come to an end!