Lex Fridman Podcast

#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet


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Jean-Baptiste Kempf is lead developer of VLC and president of VideoLAN. Kieran Kunhya is a longtime FFmpeg contributor, codec engineer, and the person behind the now-infamous FFmpeg account on X.

Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep496-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.

Transcript:

https://lexfridman.com/ffmpeg-transcript

CONTACT LEX:

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EPISODE LINKS:

FFmpeg on X: https://x.com/FFmpeg
FFmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/
VideoLAN (VLC): https://www.videolan.org/
VideoLAN on X: https://x.com/videolan
Jean-Baptiste’s Website: https://jbkempf.com/
Jean-Baptiste’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbkempf/
Jean-Baptiste’s GitHub: https://github.com/jbkempf
Kieran’s X: https://x.com/kierank_
Kieran’s LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3OORhmC
Kieran’s GitHub: https://github.com/kierank

SPONSORS:

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OUTLINE:

(00:00) – Introduction
(03:00) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(10:48) – Weirdest things VLC opens
(15:12) – How video playback works
(24:33) – Video codecs and containers
(35:20) – FFmpeg explained
(56:20) – Linus Torvalds
(1:00:59) – Turning down millions to keep VLC ad-free
(1:15:17) – FFmpeg & Google drama
(1:34:31) – FFmpeg developers
(1:41:08) – VLC and FFmpeg
(1:45:42) – History of FFmpeg
(1:48:59) – Reverse engineering codecs
(2:02:14) – FFmpeg testing
(2:06:21) – Assembly code (handwritten)
(2:30:39) – Rust programming language
(2:39:55) – FFmpeg and Libav fork
(2:48:17) – Open source burnout
(2:56:04) – x264 and internet video
(3:09:20) – Video compression basics
(3:16:17) – CIA and fake VLC
(3:26:52) – Ultra low latency streaming
(3:44:20) – AV2 codec and video patents
(3:54:12) – VLC backdoors
(4:04:27) – Video archiving
(4:11:04) – Future of FFmpeg and VLC

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