FFmpeg codec HOWTO

This page is meant as an 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,
};

First we get an AVCodec struct named cook_decoder. And then we set the variables of cook_decoder. Note that we only set the variables that are needed. Currently there is no encoder so we don't set any. If we now look at the id variable we can see that CODEC_ID_COOK isn't defined in libavcodec/cook.c. It is declared in avcodec.h.

libavcodec/avcodec.h

Here we will find the CodecID enumeration.

enum CodecID {
...
CODEC_ID_GSM,
CODEC_ID_QDM2,
CODEC_ID_COOK,
CODEC_ID_TRUESPEECH,
CODEC_ID_TTA,
...
};

CODEC_ID_COOK is there in the list. This is the list of all supported codecs in ffmpeg, the list is fixed and used internally to id every codec. Changeing the order would break binary compatibility.

This is all enough to declare a codec. Now we must register them also, because all codecs can individually be selected at runtime.