Whitepaper 1: Integration of FFmpeg into Enciris Technologies Software

The processing and management of large numbers of multimedia streams can be a headache, particularly in the fields of broadcasting, medical, telemedicine, surveillance, and video analysis. FFmpeg is one of the best-known open-source software solutions that enables manipulation of video/audio streams and files in various formats and standards.

This document discusses the various reasons why we chose to integrate FFmpeg into the Enciris Technologies API (Application Protocol Interface) and CLI (Command Line Interface) software for our LT300 range of 4K/HD capture cards (frame grabbers) as well as the CV40 range of 4K camera products, and presents the resulting benefits to our customers.

Overview, Features and History of FFmpeg

FFmpeg is an open-source project that started life in the year 2000. The project was originally started by Fabrice Bellard, a well-known programmer that is well respected for his numerous contributions to the open-source world. From its original inception, the FFmpeg project quickly established itself as a valuable and popular tool worldwide for handling all kinds of multimedia files, due mostly to its huge degree of flexibility.

Now adopted and supported by a large community of both companies and developers world-wide, the core of its architecture is based on a collection of powerful open-source libraries. These include notable tools such as libavcodec for encoding and decoding, libavformat for managing multimedia containers, and libavutil, which provides various utility functions. Today, FFmpeg is used across a vast range of application use cases, being deployed in everything from streaming platforms through video editing software to its various integrations in multiple embedded systems.

Key Features

Offering an extremely comprehensive suite of tools that supports nearly all essential operations for the processing of multimedia files. FFmpeg enables the encoding and decoding of video and audio streams using a wide range of codecs, including commonly used standards such as H.264, HEVC, and VP9 for video as well as AAC, MP3, and Opus for audio. In addition to its encoding and decoding capabilities, FFmpeg manages the multiplexing and demultiplexing of multimedia files, making it significantly easier to handle audio and video streams within containers like MP4, MKV, or AVI. In terms of use cases, it is also deployed extensively for live streaming, offering real-time conversion between different formats and protocols. Finally, it integrates a useful set of filters that allow various image and sound processing tasks, for example resizing, adding subtitles, doing color correction, and also performing audio resampling tasks.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Like all solutions, FFmpeg has undeniable strengths in certain areas as well as some limitations in others. Here is an overview of its main perceived advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• Free and open-source (licensed under GPL or LGPL, depending on the chosen options)
• Broad compatibility with video and audio formats
• Support for hardware acceleration (NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync, AMD VCE)
• Highly flexible and customizable with a wide range of options

Disadvantages:

• Complexity of the associated commands and configuration
• Dependency and update management can be challenging
• It has a relatively steep learning curve for non-experts

API and CLI overview

Enciris Technologies has developed an API and CLI software suite designed to simplify the control and operation of its LT-300 capture card family of frame grabbers as well as the CV-4x range of camera products.

Accessible via a RESTful API as well as directly from the Windows or Linux Command Line, this software allows direct interaction with the hardware to configure settings and manage multimedia streams. It provides the ability to acquire multiple video streams simultaneously, record them, and encode them in various formats. It also supports decoding and playback of various multimedia files, along with numerous integrated audio processing features including encoding, decoding, as well as resampling.

Through this simple to-use API, users can leverage all of these functions without worrying about handling the complex FFmpeg commands or management of associated software dependencies.

Why Use FFmpeg?

The integration of FFmpeg into our software addresses several key needs in multimedia stream management for customers. Firstly, FFmpeg enables leveraging hardware encoding and decoding capabilities offered by various different computer platforms, particularly through NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync, and AMD VCE processors and accelerators. This support significantly improves performance and reduces CPU load during video processing.

Additionally, FFmpeg supports a wide range of video and audio codecs, including common formats such as H.264, HEVC (H.265), and VP9 for video, as well as AAC, MP3, and Opus for audio. Because of the diversity of different standards supported, our software can adapt to many different application use-cases and ensure optimal compatibility with a large range of different formats and devices.

Another major benefit of integration is FFmpeg’s ability to perform advanced video processing tasks. It offers features such as resizing, format conversion, filter application, and color correction. These tools are essential for ensuring the highest quality of processed and recorded streams, whether this is for real-time broadcasting or for archiving or other purposes.

Finally, FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution, compatible with Windows, Linux, and other operating systems. This flexibility ensures that our software can operate seamlessly across multiple different customer infrastructures, facilitating integration into various environments and reducing deployment complexity and maintenance effort for both users, developers and IT support.

Enciris Technologies utilizes FFmpeg and its libraries under the LGPL license, ensuring compliance with open-source standards while maintaining flexibility for integration into our commercial solutions.

The integration of FFmpeg into our software significantly also simplifies the required software integration effort required from day 1 of the development process for our customers in the following areas:

• Version and dependency management: Users don’t need to worry about installing and updating FFmpeg.
• Operating system abstraction: The tool works seamlessly across multiple different OS platforms, and computer hardware (Intel, AMD or Nvidia).
• Simplified video encoding and decoding via the API: This provides direct access to FFmpeg’s functionality without requiring users to handle complex commands and options. Through our API, users can encode, decode, multiplex, and process video streams from our cards effortlessly, with our multimedia server managing all aspects of FFmpeg’s technical configuration.

Use Case: Video Recording

With our API:

1. The user sends a request to our RESTful API, specifying only the output file format
2. The software automatically handles acquisition, encoding, and recording

With our API and FFmpeg:

1. The user requests the video stream via our API
2. The stream is then redirected to FFmpeg for custom encoding (choosing codec, bitrate, etc.)
3. The encoded video is saved as a file

Conclusions

The integration of FFmpeg into Enciris Technologies’ software provides a powerful and efficient solution for multimedia processing. By embedding FFmpeg, we offer users a seamless experience, removing the complexity of configuring and managing it while ensuring access to all of its extremely powerful features.

This approach significantly reduces the technical burden on users, because it eliminates the need to handle dependencies, updates, and manage platform-specific issues. Through our RESTful API, users can effortlessly control video encoding, decoding, and processing, allowing them to focus on the creative aspects of application development rather than on the tasks of multimedia stream management. It also takes away the pain of managing hardware platform and software dependencies for updates and Long-Term Support (LTS).

By leveraging FFmpeg, and integrating it we can ensure our software remains versatile and future-proof. With continuous updates from the open-source community, FFmpeg provides ongoing improvements in performance, codec support, and hardware acceleration, allowing our customers to benefit from cutting-edge multimedia processing without any additional effort. Enciris Technologies’ integration of FFmpeg not only enhances our software’s capabilities but also provides our users with a streamlined, efficient, and scalable solutions for multimedia management. By abstracting the complexities of FFmpeg, we deliver a robust and easy-to-use system that empowers users to optimize their workflows with minimal technical overhead.

Other notable alternatives to FFmpeg include:

• GStreamer: Which is a modular framework for multimedia processing
• LibVLC: This is a library used by VLC for multimedia stream management
• HandBrake: This is a dedicated video conversion solution based on FFmpeg
• AVConv (formerly part of Libav): This is an alternative derivative of FFmpeg

Got a question, or want to know more? Reach out to us today.

Call +33 (0)5 82 9509 55 or email: info@enciris.com

About Enciris Technologies

Enciris Products are Engineered and built in France. The Enciris story started in 2006 with a vision to make a range of accessible high performance video capture products using the latest, state-of-the-art technology.

The company has evolved to become a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance video processing hardware for OEMs, system integrators, embedded systems, and professional users. Enciris provides solutions for customers to add Ultra HD 4K/Full HD camera technology, video acquisition, hardware compression, video routing, video format conversion, video overlay, video streaming and storage capabilities.

We design both off-the-shelf and customized solutions for Long Term Availability (LTA) and ultra-high reliability.

www.enciris.com Enciris is an ISO9001:2015 company.