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Thanks! I may take another stab at it in the future. One of the (many) problems I've had with it is that quite a few mkv files have improper headers (thus, you

Thanks! I may take another stab at it in the future. One of the (many) problems I've had with it is that quite a few mkv files have improper headers (thus, you can't know, for instance, the frame size and/or video length in seconds). Some simply can't be read at all - I just get black frames. Note that I'm using Windows API to parse the .mkv files (I can't use ffmpeg from a commercial app). Some may be bugs in how Windows handles .mkv files (and very unlikely to be solved in the near future) and some may be bugs in how .mkv files have been written (and ffmpeg, since it's so mature, may very well ignore "bad" frames and such). At the time I analyzed this, I considered this more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps I will reconsider this in the future, with the addendum that if I get an error or so, I will disregard the file.

devwastaken 6y ago
I was under the impression that FFmpeg can be used commercially, just so long as the source for FFmpeg itself (if modified) is available and the lgpl license is distributed with it. I could be wrong but FFmpeg is used with MediaCoder as an option, and a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app.
- CinematicStudio 6y ago
  anotheryou also pointed me to: https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ffmpeg-in-a-commercial-product https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ff... I remember looking into this a while ago in quite a bit of detail: https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p... (there's plenty of other links to this). Long story short, MPEG LA owns some patents that relate to h264/h265, and you need to pay them A LOT of $ in order to use these codecs. Using ffmpeg will not devoid you of that. Also, even somewhere on the ffmpeg page, when I last read it, it will say something more in the lines of "we're not lawyers, so take this with a grain of salt". > a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app. As far as I know unless they are actually free, they could end up being sued by MPEG LA. I remember at some point that's what I wanted to do - just download and use ffmpeg as an exe. But if I read stuff correctly, I do think I'm not allowed to do that - in other words you (as an application) are allowed to open a web browser to the link, but it's the user who needs to do the actual download and install. ---------- So all in all, after doing quite a bit of research, seeing how vague the licensing from MPEGLA is and all that, I started looking for alternatives. I found one (from Microsoft), and that's what I'm using. At this point, it satisfies most of my needs (even though I had to do lot of optimizations on top of it) -- in case this won't hold true in the future, I may revisit the whole ffmpeg mambo-jambo :D

devwastaken 6y ago

I was under the impression that FFmpeg can be used commercially, just so long as the source for FFmpeg itself (if modified) is available and the lgpl license is distributed with it. I could be wrong but FFmpeg is used with MediaCoder as an option, and a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app.

CinematicStudio 6y ago
anotheryou also pointed me to: https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ffmpeg-in-a-commercial-product https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14802/can-i-use-ff... I remember looking into this a while ago in quite a bit of detail: https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p... (there's plenty of other links to this). Long story short, MPEG LA owns some patents that relate to h264/h265, and you need to pay them A LOT of $ in order to use these codecs. Using ffmpeg will not devoid you of that. Also, even somewhere on the ffmpeg page, when I last read it, it will say something more in the lines of "we're not lawyers, so take this with a grain of salt". > a number of programs will externally fetch FFmpeg and just interop with the libraries or FFmpeg app. As far as I know unless they are actually free, they could end up being sued by MPEG LA. I remember at some point that's what I wanted to do - just download and use ffmpeg as an exe. But if I read stuff correctly, I do think I'm not allowed to do that - in other words you (as an application) are allowed to open a web browser to the link, but it's the user who needs to do the actual download and install. ---------- So all in all, after doing quite a bit of research, seeing how vague the licensing from MPEGLA is and all that, I started looking for alternatives. I found one (from Microsoft), and that's what I'm using. At this point, it satisfies most of my needs (even though I had to do lot of optimizations on top of it) -- in case this won't hold true in the future, I may revisit the whole ffmpeg mambo-jambo :D