#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation all about FFmpeg and VLC with Jean Baptiste Kempf and Karen Kunya. FFmpeg is an open source software system that is the invisible backbone behind YouTube, Netflix, Chrome, VLC, Discord, and basically every platform that touches video or audio on the Internet. It can decode, encode, transcode, stream, and play almost any video or audio format ever created. To me, it is one of the most incredible software systems ever developed, and it's all done by volunteers. VLC is also a legendary piece of software. It is an open source media player that plays basically anythi
can open? You know, there is a ton of people who are using VLC to record VHS videos. Right? Like, it's just like you plug it with a capture card, and you can basically record VHS video. Well, how does that work? Basically, it's, in all those type of capture card where you can put a in Mhmm. Or RGA, and you put that. And, actually, VLC can play those type of cards. And there is a module which allows to control directly some those VCR camcorders. We support DVD audios lately. Right? We spent the the summer working on DVD audio support. And, like, there is no no one's making any DVD audio support
The one Star Wars video game, the first ten second opening sequence, someone has gone and implemented that and make sure that's bit exact on one disc that existed at one time of one little sequence in the game.
And then, funnyly, there there was a at one video conference, we made a competition to meet make the weirdest and most horrible file ever and see if VLC could play it.
What it end up being? What's the file? It was
an MKV file made by Derek Yeah. Which each of the frame was changing resolution, aspect ratio, rotation, and and and it was like Did it work? Yes. And there was another one where the whole video was actually animated subtitles. Right? SSA. Right? So Yeah. Each of that. Yeah. This one was so each each frame was a black frame, but on top of that, there was a a subtitle that was animated for each frame.
There was a file that's a valid zip and a valid m p three at the same time or something like that. So So, yeah, we'd made
a competition of stupid files.
And it worked. It opened all of the stupid files.
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