Btw, what is up to gstreamer vs. MPV vs. ffmpeg ? I dont get the difference.
As far as I understand, MPV is a video player application and offers libmpv as a high-level video playback library. I’m not sure, if it makes use of GStreamer or ffmpeg under the hood, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
GStreamer is somewhat lower in the stack and much more generic. It allows orchestrating various steps in a media processing pipeline, so could also be used for video editing or transcoding or the like.
And ffmpeg is a library specifically for transcoding of as many formats as possible. You can use ffmpeg as part of GStreamer via a plugin, for example. But there is also a really useful ffmpeg CLI, with which you can script all kinds of file conversions, like MP3 to OGG Opus is something I do often.
FFplay is a very simple and portable media player using the FFmpeg libraries and the SDL library. It is mostly used as a testbed for the various FFmpeg APIs.
Given that, I would expect that it actually doesn’t make use of GStreamer, just to really keep things as simple as possible.
From a programming perspective, it isn’t really surprising that these projects have overlap. You see that quite often, that some venerable library, like ffmpeg, does a massive chunk of the grunt work and then you’ve got libraries like GStreamer and libmpv, which sit on top of that, and ‘just’ integrate it into a wider framework or tie it all together for a specific purpose.
From an outside perspective, that will make it look like they’re all similar, because the core of the magic, ffmpeg, is included into all of them (I assume).
It’s just more confusing here than in other projects, because each of these projects is visible to us users in some way.
Overview:
GStreamer is a multimedia framework designed to build a wide variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming, and editing.
Key Features:
Modular Design: Uses a pipeline-based architecture where data flows through a sequence of elements (plugins).
Cross-Platform: Works on various operating systems like Linux, Windows, macOS, and more.
Extensible: Supports a wide range of media formats and codecs via plugins.
Use Cases: Often used in applications that need complex media processing, such as video editors, streaming servers, and media players.
Strengths:
Highly flexible and extensible.
Suitable for custom multimedia applications and complex media processing tasks.
Weaknesses:
Can be complex to set up and use for simple tasks.
Libav
Overview:
Libav is a multimedia library that was forked from FFmpeg in 2011. It provides tools and libraries to handle multimedia data.
Key Features:
Libraries: Includes libavcodec, libavformat, libavfilter, and others for encoding, decoding, filtering, and playing audio and video.
Command-Line Tools: Similar to FFmpeg, Libav offers command-line tools for media manipulation.
Cross-Platform: Works on multiple operating systems.
Strengths:
Robust libraries for developers needing to work with multimedia data.
Active development and support.
Weaknesses:
Can be confusing due to its similarities and differences with FFmpeg.
FFmpeg
Overview:
FFmpeg is a comprehensive multimedia framework capable of decoding, encoding, transcoding, muxing, demuxing, streaming, filtering, and playing virtually anything that humans and machines have created.
Key Features:
Wide Codec Support: Supports a vast array of codecs.
Command-Line Tools: Powerful and versatile tools like ffmpeg for converting, streaming, and playing media.
Libraries: Provides libraries such as libavcodec, libavformat, and libavutil.
Strengths:
Extremely versatile and powerful.
Broad community support and extensive documentation.
Weaknesses:
Can be complex to use for beginners.
The command-line interface may be intimidating for new users.
MPV
Overview:
MPV is a media player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide variety of video and audio file formats, subtitle types, and streaming protocols.
Key Features:
High-Quality Video Output: Supports hardware acceleration and advanced video scaling.
Scripting and Configurability: Can be extensively customized with scripts and configuration files.
Minimalistic UI: Focuses on a simple and efficient user interface.
Strengths:
High performance with minimal system resources.
Strong support for advanced video playback features.
Weaknesses:
Lacks a traditional graphical user interface (GUI) which might be a downside for some users.
VLC
Overview:
VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files, as well as DVDs, audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Key Features:
Versatility: Supports almost every video and audio format.
User-Friendly: Has a simple and intuitive GUI.
Streaming Capabilities: Can stream media over networks and transcode multimedia files.
Strengths:
Easy to use with a graphical interface.
Highly portable and cross-platform.
Extensive feature set with built-in codecs.
Weaknesses:
Sometimes considered less performant compared to dedicated players like MPV.
GUI may be considered too basic for advanced users.
Comparison Summary
GStreamer: Best for complex media processing applications with a need for custom pipelines.
Libav: Focused on providing robust libraries for multimedia handling, similar to FFmpeg.
FFmpeg: Extremely versatile and powerful for a wide range of multimedia tasks, with strong community support.
MPV: High-performance media player with advanced playback features but minimalistic UI.
VLC: User-friendly, versatile media player with broad format support and streaming capabilities.
So basically they all do the same stuff. I dont get it.
I currently use Celluloid and really like it.
It is minimal and the flatpak is great
But I would like to try the KDE equivalent.
Btw, what is up to gstreamer vs. MPV vs. ffmpeg ? I dont get the difference.
As far as I understand, MPV is a video player application and offers libmpv as a high-level video playback library. I’m not sure, if it makes use of GStreamer or ffmpeg under the hood, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
GStreamer is somewhat lower in the stack and much more generic. It allows orchestrating various steps in a media processing pipeline, so could also be used for video editing or transcoding or the like.
And ffmpeg is a library specifically for transcoding of as many formats as possible. You can use ffmpeg as part of GStreamer via a plugin, for example. But there is also a really useful ffmpeg CLI, with which you can script all kinds of file conversions, like MP3 to OGG Opus is something I do often.
But you can also use ffmpeg to play videos, through
ffplay. Which might use gstreamer under the hood or not?Yeah. The
ffplaydocumentation says:Given that, I would expect that it actually doesn’t make use of GStreamer, just to really keep things as simple as possible.
From a programming perspective, it isn’t really surprising that these projects have overlap. You see that quite often, that some venerable library, like ffmpeg, does a massive chunk of the grunt work and then you’ve got libraries like GStreamer and libmpv, which sit on top of that, and ‘just’ integrate it into a wider framework or tie it all together for a specific purpose.
From an outside perspective, that will make it look like they’re all similar, because the core of the magic, ffmpeg, is included into all of them (I assume).
It’s just more confusing here than in other projects, because each of these projects is visible to us users in some way.
Very strange :D
Then Fedora only ships libav stuff, which is forked off ffmpeg, and only includes the free stuff. I wonder how these now work together
ChatGPT 4 response
GStreamer
Overview: GStreamer is a multimedia framework designed to build a wide variety of media-handling components, including simple audio playback, audio and video playback, recording, streaming, and editing.
Key Features:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Libav
Overview: Libav is a multimedia library that was forked from FFmpeg in 2011. It provides tools and libraries to handle multimedia data.
Key Features:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
FFmpeg
Overview: FFmpeg is a comprehensive multimedia framework capable of decoding, encoding, transcoding, muxing, demuxing, streaming, filtering, and playing virtually anything that humans and machines have created.
Key Features:
ffmpegfor converting, streaming, and playing media.Strengths:
Weaknesses:
MPV
Overview: MPV is a media player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide variety of video and audio file formats, subtitle types, and streaming protocols.
Key Features:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
VLC
Overview: VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files, as well as DVDs, audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Key Features:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Comparison Summary
So basically they all do the same stuff. I dont get it.