path: root/doc/muxers.texi

@chapter Muxers
@c man begin MUXERS

Muxers are configured elements in Libav which allow writing
multimedia streams to a particular type of file.

When you configure your Libav build, all the supported muxers
are enabled by default. You can list all available muxers using the
configure option @code{--list-muxers}.

You can disable all the muxers with the configure option
@code{--disable-muxers} and selectively enable / disable single muxers
with the options @code{--enable-muxer=@var{MUXER}} /
@code{--disable-muxer=@var{MUXER}}.

The option @code{-formats} of the ff* tools will display the list of
enabled muxers.

A description of some of the currently available muxers follows.

@anchor{crc}
@section crc

CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) testing format.

This muxer computes and prints the Adler-32 CRC of all the input audio
and video frames. By default audio frames are converted to signed
16-bit raw audio and video frames to raw video before computing the
CRC.

The output of the muxer consists of a single line of the form:
CRC=0x@var{CRC}, where @var{CRC} is a hexadecimal number 0-padded to
8 digits containing the CRC for all the decoded input frames.

For example to compute the CRC of the input, and store it in the file
@file{out.crc}:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f crc out.crc
@end example

You can print the CRC to stdout with the command:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f crc -
@end example

You can select the output format of each frame with @file{ffmpeg} by
specifying the audio and video codec and format. For example to
compute the CRC of the input audio converted to PCM unsigned 8-bit
and the input video converted to MPEG-2 video, use the command:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -acodec pcm_u8 -vcodec mpeg2video -f crc -
@end example

See also the @code{framecrc} muxer (@pxref{framecrc}).

@anchor{framecrc}
@section framecrc

Per-frame CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) testing format.

This muxer computes and prints the Adler-32 CRC for each decoded audio
and video frame. By default audio frames are converted to signed
16-bit raw audio and video frames to raw video before computing the
CRC.

The output of the muxer consists of a line for each audio and video
frame of the form: @var{stream_index}, @var{frame_dts},
@var{frame_size}, 0x@var{CRC}, where @var{CRC} is a hexadecimal
number 0-padded to 8 digits containing the CRC of the decoded frame.

For example to compute the CRC of each decoded frame in the input, and
store it in the file @file{out.crc}:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f framecrc out.crc
@end example

You can print the CRC of each decoded frame to stdout with the command:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -f framecrc -
@end example

You can select the output format of each frame with @file{ffmpeg} by
specifying the audio and video codec and format. For example, to
compute the CRC of each decoded input audio frame converted to PCM
unsigned 8-bit and of each decoded input video frame converted to
MPEG-2 video, use the command:
@example
ffmpeg -i INPUT -acodec pcm_u8 -vcodec mpeg2video -f framecrc -
@end example

See also the @code{crc} muxer (@pxref{crc}).

@section image2

Image file muxer.

The image file muxer writes video frames to image files.

The output filenames are specified by a pattern, which can be used to
produce sequentially numbered series of files.
The pattern may contain the string "%d" or "%0@var{N}d", this string
specifies the position of the characters representing a numbering in
the filenames. If the form "%0@var{N}d" is used, the string
representing the number in each filename is 0-padded to @var{N}
digits. The literal character '%' can be specified in the pattern with
the string "%%".

If the pattern contains "%d" or "%0@var{N}d", the first filename of
the file list specified will contain the number 1, all the following
numbers will be sequential.

The pattern may contain a suffix which is used to automatically
determine the format of the image files to write.

For example the pattern "img-%03d.bmp" will specify a sequence of
filenames of the form @file{img-001.bmp}, @file{img-002.bmp}, ...,
@file{img-010.bmp}, etc.
The pattern "img%%-%d.jpg" will specify a sequence of filenames of the
form @file{img%-1.jpg}, @file{img%-2.jpg}, ..., @file{img%-10.jpg},
etc.

The following example shows how to use @file{ffmpeg} for creating a
sequence of files @file{img-001.jpeg}, @file{img-002.jpeg}, ...,
taking one image every second from the input video:
@example
ffmpeg -i in.avi -r 1 -f image2 'img-%03d.jpeg'
@end example

Note that with @file{ffmpeg}, if the format is not specified with the
@code{-f} option and the output filename specifies an image file
format, the image2 muxer is automatically selected, so the previous
command can be written as:
@example
ffmpeg -i in.avi -r 1 'img-%03d.jpeg'
@end example

Note also that the pattern must not necessarily contain "%d" or
"%0@var{N}d", for example to create a single image file
@file{img.jpeg} from the input video you can employ the command:
@example
ffmpeg -i in.avi -f image2 -vframes 1 img.jpeg
@end example

@section mpegts

MPEG transport stream muxer.

This muxer implements ISO 13818-1 and part of ETSI EN 300 468.

The muxer options are:

@table @option
@item -mpegts_original_network_id @var{number}
Set the original_network_id (default 0x0001). This is unique identifier
of a network in DVB. Its main use is in the unique identification of a
service through the path Original_Network_ID, Transport_Stream_ID.
@item -mpegts_transport_stream_id @var{number}
Set the transport_stream_id (default 0x0001). This identifies a
transponder in DVB.
@item -mpegts_service_id @var{number}
Set the service_id (default 0x0001) also known as program in DVB.
@item -mpegts_pmt_start_pid @var{number}
Set the first PID for PMT (default 0x1000, max 0x1f00).
@item -mpegts_start_pid @var{number}
Set the first PID for data packets (default 0x0100, max 0x0f00).
@end table

The recognized metadata settings in mpegts muxer are @code{service_provider}
and @code{service_name}. If they are not set the default for
@code{service_provider} is "Libav" and the default for
@code{service_name} is "Service01".

@example
ffmpeg -i file.mpg -acodec copy -vcodec copy \
     -mpegts_original_network_id 0x1122 \
     -mpegts_transport_stream_id 0x3344 \
     -mpegts_service_id 0x5566 \
     -mpegts_pmt_start_pid 0x1500 \
     -mpegts_start_pid 0x150 \
     -metadata service_provider="Some provider" \
     -metadata service_name="Some Channel" \
     -y out.ts
@end example

@section null

Null muxer.

This muxer does not generate any output file, it is mainly useful for
testing or benchmarking purposes.

For example to benchmark decoding with @file{ffmpeg} you can use the
command:
@example
ffmpeg -benchmark -i INPUT -f null out.null
@end example

Note that the above command does not read or write the @file{out.null}
file, but specifying the output file is required by the @file{ffmpeg}
syntax.

Alternatively you can write the command as:
@example
ffmpeg -benchmark -i INPUT -f null -
@end example

@c man end MUXERS