4 Demuxers are configured elements in FFmpeg that can read the
5 multimedia streams from a particular type of file.
7 When you configure your FFmpeg build, all the supported demuxers
8 are enabled by default. You can list all available ones using the
9 configure option @code{--list-demuxers}.
11 You can disable all the demuxers using the configure option
12 @code{--disable-demuxers}, and selectively enable a single demuxer with
13 the option @code{--enable-demuxer=@var{DEMUXER}}, or disable it
14 with the option @code{--disable-demuxer=@var{DEMUXER}}.
16 The option @code{-demuxers} of the ff* tools will display the list of
17 enabled demuxers. Use @code{-formats} to view a combined list of
18 enabled demuxers and muxers.
20 The description of some of the currently available demuxers follows.
24 Audible Format 2, 3, and 4 demuxer.
26 This demuxer is used to demux Audible Format 2, 3, and 4 (.aa) files.
30 Apple HTTP Live Streaming demuxer.
32 This demuxer presents all AVStreams from all variant streams.
33 The id field is set to the bitrate variant index number. By setting
34 the discard flags on AVStreams (by pressing 'a' or 'v' in ffplay),
35 the caller can decide which variant streams to actually receive.
36 The total bitrate of the variant that the stream belongs to is
37 available in a metadata key named "variant_bitrate".
41 Animated Portable Network Graphics demuxer.
43 This demuxer is used to demux APNG files.
44 All headers, but the PNG signature, up to (but not including) the first
45 fcTL chunk are transmitted as extradata.
46 Frames are then split as being all the chunks between two fcTL ones, or
47 between the last fcTL and IEND chunks.
50 @item -ignore_loop @var{bool}
51 Ignore the loop variable in the file if set.
52 @item -max_fps @var{int}
53 Maximum framerate in frames per second (0 for no limit).
54 @item -default_fps @var{int}
55 Default framerate in frames per second when none is specified in the file
56 (0 meaning as fast as possible).
61 Advanced Systems Format demuxer.
63 This demuxer is used to demux ASF files and MMS network streams.
66 @item -no_resync_search @var{bool}
67 Do not try to resynchronize by looking for a certain optional start code.
73 Virtual concatenation script demuxer.
75 This demuxer reads a list of files and other directives from a text file and
76 demuxes them one after the other, as if all their packets had been muxed
79 The timestamps in the files are adjusted so that the first file starts at 0
80 and each next file starts where the previous one finishes. Note that it is
81 done globally and may cause gaps if all streams do not have exactly the same
84 All files must have the same streams (same codecs, same time base, etc.).
86 The duration of each file is used to adjust the timestamps of the next file:
87 if the duration is incorrect (because it was computed using the bit-rate or
88 because the file is truncated, for example), it can cause artifacts. The
89 @code{duration} directive can be used to override the duration stored in
94 The script is a text file in extended-ASCII, with one directive per line.
95 Empty lines, leading spaces and lines starting with '#' are ignored. The
96 following directive is recognized:
100 @item @code{file @var{path}}
101 Path to a file to read; special characters and spaces must be escaped with
102 backslash or single quotes.
104 All subsequent file-related directives apply to that file.
106 @item @code{ffconcat version 1.0}
107 Identify the script type and version. It also sets the @option{safe} option
110 To make FFmpeg recognize the format automatically, this directive must
111 appear exactly as is (no extra space or byte-order-mark) on the very first
114 @item @code{duration @var{dur}}
115 Duration of the file. This information can be specified from the file;
116 specifying it here may be more efficient or help if the information from the
117 file is not available or accurate.
119 If the duration is set for all files, then it is possible to seek in the
120 whole concatenated video.
122 @item @code{inpoint @var{timestamp}}
123 In point of the file. When the demuxer opens the file it instantly seeks to the
124 specified timestamp. Seeking is done so that all streams can be presented
125 successfully at In point.
127 This directive works best with intra frame codecs, because for non-intra frame
128 ones you will usually get extra packets before the actual In point and the
129 decoded content will most likely contain frames before In point too.
131 For each file, packets before the file In point will have timestamps less than
132 the calculated start timestamp of the file (negative in case of the first
133 file), and the duration of the files (if not specified by the @code{duration}
134 directive) will be reduced based on their specified In point.
136 Because of potential packets before the specified In point, packet timestamps
137 may overlap between two concatenated files.
139 @item @code{outpoint @var{timestamp}}
140 Out point of the file. When the demuxer reaches the specified decoding
141 timestamp in any of the streams, it handles it as an end of file condition and
142 skips the current and all the remaining packets from all streams.
144 Out point is exclusive, which means that the demuxer will not output packets
145 with a decoding timestamp greater or equal to Out point.
147 This directive works best with intra frame codecs and formats where all streams
148 are tightly interleaved. For non-intra frame codecs you will usually get
149 additional packets with presentation timestamp after Out point therefore the
150 decoded content will most likely contain frames after Out point too. If your
151 streams are not tightly interleaved you may not get all the packets from all
152 streams before Out point and you may only will be able to decode the earliest
153 stream until Out point.
155 The duration of the files (if not specified by the @code{duration}
156 directive) will be reduced based on their specified Out point.
158 @item @code{file_packet_metadata @var{key=value}}
159 Metadata of the packets of the file. The specified metadata will be set for
160 each file packet. You can specify this directive multiple times to add multiple
164 Introduce a stream in the virtual file.
165 All subsequent stream-related directives apply to the last introduced
167 Some streams properties must be set in order to allow identifying the
168 matching streams in the subfiles.
169 If no streams are defined in the script, the streams from the first file are
172 @item @code{exact_stream_id @var{id}}
173 Set the id of the stream.
174 If this directive is given, the string with the corresponding id in the
175 subfiles will be used.
176 This is especially useful for MPEG-PS (VOB) files, where the order of the
177 streams is not reliable.
183 This demuxer accepts the following option:
188 If set to 1, reject unsafe file paths. A file path is considered safe if it
189 does not contain a protocol specification and is relative and all components
190 only contain characters from the portable character set (letters, digits,
191 period, underscore and hyphen) and have no period at the beginning of a
194 If set to 0, any file name is accepted.
198 -1 is equivalent to 1 if the format was automatically
199 probed and 0 otherwise.
202 If set to 1, try to perform automatic conversions on packet data to make the
203 streams concatenable.
206 Currently, the only conversion is adding the h264_mp4toannexb bitstream
207 filter to H.264 streams in MP4 format. This is necessary in particular if
208 there are resolution changes.
210 @item segment_time_metadata
211 If set to 1, every packet will contain the @var{lavf.concat.start_time} and the
212 @var{lavf.concat.duration} packet metadata values which are the start_time and
213 the duration of the respective file segments in the concatenated output
214 expressed in microseconds. The duration metadata is only set if it is known
215 based on the concat file.
224 Use absolute filenames and include some comments:
227 file /mnt/share/file-1.wav
228 # my second filename including whitespace
229 file '/mnt/share/file 2.wav'
230 # my third filename including whitespace plus single quote
231 file '/mnt/share/file 3'\''.wav'
235 Allow for input format auto-probing, use safe filenames and set the duration of
243 file subdir/file-2.wav
247 @section flv, live_flv
249 Adobe Flash Video Format demuxer.
251 This demuxer is used to demux FLV files and RTMP network streams. In case of live network streams, if you force format, you may use live_flv option instead of flv to survive timestamp discontinuities.
254 ffmpeg -f flv -i myfile.flv ...
255 ffmpeg -f live_flv -i rtmp://<any.server>/anything/key ....
260 @item -flv_metadata @var{bool}
261 Allocate the streams according to the onMetaData array content.
266 Animated GIF demuxer.
268 It accepts the following options:
272 Set the minimum valid delay between frames in hundredths of seconds.
273 Range is 0 to 6000. Default value is 2.
276 Set the maximum valid delay between frames in hundredth of seconds.
277 Range is 0 to 65535. Default value is 65535 (nearly eleven minutes),
278 the maximum value allowed by the specification.
281 Set the default delay between frames in hundredths of seconds.
282 Range is 0 to 6000. Default value is 10.
285 GIF files can contain information to loop a certain number of times (or
286 infinitely). If @option{ignore_loop} is set to 1, then the loop setting
287 from the input will be ignored and looping will not occur. If set to 0,
288 then looping will occur and will cycle the number of times according to
289 the GIF. Default value is 1.
292 For example, with the overlay filter, place an infinitely looping GIF
295 ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ignore_loop 0 -i input.gif -filter_complex overlay=shortest=1 out.mkv
298 Note that in the above example the shortest option for overlay filter is
299 used to end the output video at the length of the shortest input file,
300 which in this case is @file{input.mp4} as the GIF in this example loops
307 It accepts the following options:
310 @item live_start_index
311 segment index to start live streams at (negative values are from the end).
313 @item allowed_extensions
314 ',' separated list of file extensions that hls is allowed to access.
317 Maximum number of times a insufficient list is attempted to be reloaded.
318 Default value is 1000.
320 @item http_persistent
321 Use persistent HTTP connections. Applicable only for HTTP streams.
325 Use multiple HTTP connections for downloading HTTP segments.
326 Enabled by default for HTTP/1.1 servers.
333 This demuxer reads from a list of image files specified by a pattern.
334 The syntax and meaning of the pattern is specified by the
335 option @var{pattern_type}.
337 The pattern may contain a suffix which is used to automatically
338 determine the format of the images contained in the files.
340 The size, the pixel format, and the format of each image must be the
341 same for all the files in the sequence.
343 This demuxer accepts the following options:
346 Set the frame rate for the video stream. It defaults to 25.
348 If set to 1, loop over the input. Default value is 0.
350 Select the pattern type used to interpret the provided filename.
352 @var{pattern_type} accepts one of the following values.
355 Disable pattern matching, therefore the video will only contain the specified
356 image. You should use this option if you do not want to create sequences from
357 multiple images and your filenames may contain special pattern characters.
359 Select a sequence pattern type, used to specify a sequence of files
360 indexed by sequential numbers.
362 A sequence pattern may contain the string "%d" or "%0@var{N}d", which
363 specifies the position of the characters representing a sequential
364 number in each filename matched by the pattern. If the form
365 "%d0@var{N}d" is used, the string representing the number in each
366 filename is 0-padded and @var{N} is the total number of 0-padded
367 digits representing the number. The literal character '%' can be
368 specified in the pattern with the string "%%".
370 If the sequence pattern contains "%d" or "%0@var{N}d", the first filename of
371 the file list specified by the pattern must contain a number
372 inclusively contained between @var{start_number} and
373 @var{start_number}+@var{start_number_range}-1, and all the following
374 numbers must be sequential.
376 For example the pattern "img-%03d.bmp" will match a sequence of
377 filenames of the form @file{img-001.bmp}, @file{img-002.bmp}, ...,
378 @file{img-010.bmp}, etc.; the pattern "i%%m%%g-%d.jpg" will match a
379 sequence of filenames of the form @file{i%m%g-1.jpg},
380 @file{i%m%g-2.jpg}, ..., @file{i%m%g-10.jpg}, etc.
382 Note that the pattern must not necessarily contain "%d" or
383 "%0@var{N}d", for example to convert a single image file
384 @file{img.jpeg} you can employ the command:
386 ffmpeg -i img.jpeg img.png
390 Select a glob wildcard pattern type.
392 The pattern is interpreted like a @code{glob()} pattern. This is only
393 selectable if libavformat was compiled with globbing support.
395 @item glob_sequence @emph{(deprecated, will be removed)}
396 Select a mixed glob wildcard/sequence pattern.
398 If your version of libavformat was compiled with globbing support, and
399 the provided pattern contains at least one glob meta character among
400 @code{%*?[]@{@}} that is preceded by an unescaped "%", the pattern is
401 interpreted like a @code{glob()} pattern, otherwise it is interpreted
402 like a sequence pattern.
404 All glob special characters @code{%*?[]@{@}} must be prefixed
405 with "%". To escape a literal "%" you shall use "%%".
407 For example the pattern @code{foo-%*.jpeg} will match all the
408 filenames prefixed by "foo-" and terminating with ".jpeg", and
409 @code{foo-%?%?%?.jpeg} will match all the filenames prefixed with
410 "foo-", followed by a sequence of three characters, and terminating
413 This pattern type is deprecated in favor of @var{glob} and
417 Default value is @var{glob_sequence}.
419 Set the pixel format of the images to read. If not specified the pixel
420 format is guessed from the first image file in the sequence.
422 Set the index of the file matched by the image file pattern to start
423 to read from. Default value is 0.
424 @item start_number_range
425 Set the index interval range to check when looking for the first image
426 file in the sequence, starting from @var{start_number}. Default value
429 If set to 1, will set frame timestamp to modification time of image file. Note
430 that monotonity of timestamps is not provided: images go in the same order as
431 without this option. Default value is 0.
432 If set to 2, will set frame timestamp to the modification time of the image file in
433 nanosecond precision.
435 Set the video size of the images to read. If not specified the video
436 size is guessed from the first image file in the sequence.
443 Use @command{ffmpeg} for creating a video from the images in the file
444 sequence @file{img-001.jpeg}, @file{img-002.jpeg}, ..., assuming an
445 input frame rate of 10 frames per second:
447 ffmpeg -framerate 10 -i 'img-%03d.jpeg' out.mkv
451 As above, but start by reading from a file with index 100 in the sequence:
453 ffmpeg -framerate 10 -start_number 100 -i 'img-%03d.jpeg' out.mkv
457 Read images matching the "*.png" glob pattern , that is all the files
458 terminating with the ".png" suffix:
460 ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob -i "*.png" out.mkv
466 The Game Music Emu library is a collection of video game music file emulators.
468 See @url{http://code.google.com/p/game-music-emu/} for more information.
470 Some files have multiple tracks. The demuxer will pick the first track by
471 default. The @option{track_index} option can be used to select a different
472 track. Track indexes start at 0. The demuxer exports the number of tracks as
473 @var{tracks} meta data entry.
475 For very large files, the @option{max_size} option may have to be adjusted.
479 libopenmpt based module demuxer
481 See @url{https://lib.openmpt.org/libopenmpt/} for more information.
483 Some files have multiple subsongs (tracks) this can be set with the @option{subsong}
486 It accepts the following options:
490 Set the subsong index. This can be either 'all', 'auto', or the index of the
491 subsong. Subsong indexes start at 0. The default is 'auto'.
493 The default value is to let libopenmpt choose.
496 Set the channel layout. Valid values are 1, 2, and 4 channel layouts.
497 The default value is STEREO.
500 Set the sample rate for libopenmpt to output.
501 Range is from 1000 to INT_MAX. The value default is 48000.
504 @section mov/mp4/3gp/QuickTime
506 QuickTime / MP4 demuxer.
508 This demuxer accepts the following options:
511 Enable loading of external tracks, disabled by default.
512 Enabling this can theoretically leak information in some use cases.
514 @item use_absolute_path
515 Allows loading of external tracks via absolute paths, disabled by default.
516 Enabling this poses a security risk. It should only be enabled if the source
517 is known to be non malicious.
523 MPEG-2 transport stream demuxer.
525 This demuxer accepts the following options:
528 Set size limit for looking up a new synchronization. Default value is
531 @item fix_teletext_pts
532 Override teletext packet PTS and DTS values with the timestamps calculated
533 from the PCR of the first program which the teletext stream is part of and is
534 not discarded. Default value is 1, set this option to 0 if you want your
535 teletext packet PTS and DTS values untouched.
538 Output option carrying the raw packet size in bytes.
539 Show the detected raw packet size, cannot be set by the user.
542 Scan and combine all PMTs. The value is an integer with value from -1
543 to 1 (-1 means automatic setting, 1 means enabled, 0 means
544 disabled). Default value is -1.
549 MJPEG encapsulated in multi-part MIME demuxer.
551 This demuxer allows reading of MJPEG, where each frame is represented as a part of
552 multipart/x-mixed-replace stream.
555 @item strict_mime_boundary
556 Default implementation applies a relaxed standard to multi-part MIME boundary detection,
557 to prevent regression with numerous existing endpoints not generating a proper MIME
558 MJPEG stream. Turning this option on by setting it to 1 will result in a stricter check
559 of the boundary value.
566 This demuxer allows one to read raw video data. Since there is no header
567 specifying the assumed video parameters, the user must specify them
568 in order to be able to decode the data correctly.
570 This demuxer accepts the following options:
574 Set input video frame rate. Default value is 25.
577 Set the input video pixel format. Default value is @code{yuv420p}.
580 Set the input video size. This value must be specified explicitly.
583 For example to read a rawvideo file @file{input.raw} with
584 @command{ffplay}, assuming a pixel format of @code{rgb24}, a video
585 size of @code{320x240}, and a frame rate of 10 images per second, use
588 ffplay -f rawvideo -pixel_format rgb24 -video_size 320x240 -framerate 10 input.raw
593 SBaGen script demuxer.
595 This demuxer reads the script language used by SBaGen
596 @url{http://uazu.net/sbagen/} to generate binaural beats sessions. A SBG
597 script looks like that:
600 a: 300-2.5/3 440+4.5/0
601 b: 300-2.5/0 440+4.5/3
610 A SBG script can mix absolute and relative timestamps. If the script uses
611 either only absolute timestamps (including the script start time) or only
612 relative ones, then its layout is fixed, and the conversion is
613 straightforward. On the other hand, if the script mixes both kind of
614 timestamps, then the @var{NOW} reference for relative timestamps will be
615 taken from the current time of day at the time the script is read, and the
616 script layout will be frozen according to that reference. That means that if
617 the script is directly played, the actual times will match the absolute
618 timestamps up to the sound controller's clock accuracy, but if the user
619 somehow pauses the playback or seeks, all times will be shifted accordingly.
623 JSON captions used for @url{http://www.ted.com/, TED Talks}.
625 TED does not provide links to the captions, but they can be guessed from the
626 page. The file @file{tools/bookmarklets.html} from the FFmpeg source tree
627 contains a bookmarklet to expose them.
629 This demuxer accepts the following option:
632 Set the start time of the TED talk, in milliseconds. The default is 15000
633 (15s). It is used to sync the captions with the downloadable videos, because
634 they include a 15s intro.
637 Example: convert the captions to a format most players understand:
639 ffmpeg -i http://www.ted.com/talks/subtitles/id/1/lang/en talk1-en.srt