FFmpeg codec HOWTO

This page is meant as a introduction to the internal codec api in ffmpeg. It will also show how the codecs are connected with the demuxers.

libavcodec/avcodec.h

The first thing to look at is the AVCodec struct.

typedef struct AVCodec {
    const char *name;
    enum CodecType type;
    enum CodecID id;
    int priv_data_size;
    int (*init)(AVCodecContext *);
    int (*encode)(AVCodecContext *, uint8_t *buf, int buf_size, void *data);
    int (*close)(AVCodecContext *);
    int (*decode)(AVCodecContext *, void *outdata, int *outdata_size,
                  uint8_t *buf, int buf_size);
    int capabilities;
    struct AVCodec *next;
    void (*flush)(AVCodecContext *);
    const AVRational *supported_framerates; ///array of supported framerates, or NULL if any, array is terminated by {0,0}
    const enum PixelFormat *pix_fmts;       ///array of supported pixel formats, or NULL if unknown, array is terminanted by -1
} AVCodec;

Here we can see that we have some elements to name the codec, what type it is (audio/video), the supported pixel formats and some function pointers for init/encode/decode and close. Now lets see how it is used.

libavcodec/cook.c

If we look in this file at the bottom we can see this code:

AVCodec cook_decoder =
{
    .name = "cook",
    .type = CODEC_TYPE_AUDIO,
    .id = CODEC_ID_COOK,
    .priv_data_size = sizeof(COOKContext),
    .init = cook_decode_init,
    .close = cook_decode_close,
    .decode = cook_decode_frame,
};