FFmpeg (.NET Wrapper)

A .NET wrapper library for FFmpeg built using FFmpeg.AutoGen.
This library provides a managed, object-oriented interface to FFmpeg’s C API — making it easier, safer, and more intuitive to use FFmpeg in .NET applications.

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📖 Overview

FFmpeg is a powerful open-source multimedia framework for handling video, audio, and streams.
While FFmpeg.AutoGen exposes FFmpeg’s native C API to .NET, it requires working directly with pointers and unsafe memory operations.

The FFmpeg (.NET Wrapper) library provides a high-level, managed abstraction over FFmpeg.AutoGen — letting you access FFmpeg’s encoding, decoding, transcoding, and streaming capabilities safely from C#.

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Prerequisites

• .NET Standard 2.1 compatible runtime (e.g., .NET Core 3.1+, .NET 5+, .NET 6+, Mono, etc.)
• FFmpeg binaries available in your system path

Supported FFmpeg Versions

FFmpeg 8.0+ "Huffman/Hoare"

Library	Version
avcodec	62
avdevice	62
avfilter	11
avformat	62
avutil	60
swresample	6
swscale	9

2. Loading FFmpeg Libraries

The FFmpeg namespace includes a static helper class named FFmpegLoader, which is responsible for locating and initializing the native FFmpeg libraries before use.
If Initialize() is not called manually, the library will automatically attempt to locate the FFmpeg binaries using a predefined search order.

Use the NuGet package FFmpegDotNet.bin.winx64 to automatically include the LGPL FFmpeg binaries.

Default Search Order

When FFmpegLoader.Initialize() is called with no parameters, the following directories are searched in order:

1. Current directory (./)
2. ./ffmpeg/
3. Platform-specific subdirectories (e.g. ./ffmpeg/win-x64, ./ffmpeg/linux-arm64, etc.)
4. System %PATH% environment variable

If a suitable library is not found, initialization will fail and FFmpeg functions will be unavailable.

🧩 Important Classes

The FFmpeg namespace provides a set of managed wrapper classes around FFmpeg’s core C structs and APIs.
These classes simplify the process of interacting with FFmpeg by handling resource management, initialization, and data conversion automatically.

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🎞️ Core Low-Level Wrappers

These classes map directly to FFmpeg’s internal structures.
They are typically used when building advanced or custom media pipelines.

Class	Description
FFmpeg.Formats.FormatContext	Wraps AVFormatContext. Handles input/output container formats, stream information, and demuxing/muxing.
FFmpeg.Codecs.CodecContext	Wraps AVCodecContext. Manages codecs for encoding and decoding audio/video streams.
FFmpeg.Utils.AVPacket	Wraps AVPacket. Represents encoded data (compressed frames or packets).
FFmpeg.Utils.AVFrame	Wraps AVFrame. Represents decoded, uncompressed media frames in memory.
FFmpeg.Filters.FilterGraph	Wraps AVFilterGraph. Provides access to FFmpeg’s powerful filter system (for resizing, color correction, etc.).
FFmpeg.Images.SwsContext	Wraps SwsContext. Used for image scaling and pixel format conversion via libswscale.
FFmpeg.Audio.SwrContext	Wraps SwrContext. Handles audio resampling, format conversion, and channel layout adjustments via libswresample.

🧠 Note:
These classes closely follow FFmpeg’s internal lifecycle patterns and should be disposed (IDisposable) when no longer needed.

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⚡ High-Level Abstractions

If your goal is to read, decode, encode, or transcode media streams,
you can use the high-level abstractions instead of managing FormatContext and CodecContext directly.

Class	Description
MediaSource	Simplifies reading and decoding frames from a file or stream. Handles demuxing and decoding internally.
MediaSink	Simplifies encoding and writing frames to a file or stream. Handles muxing and encoding internally.
Transcoder	Provides a convenient way to read from one source and write to another, performing full media transcoding.

These abstractions are ideal for typical scenarios such as:

• Extracting frames from a video
• Re-encoding media to a different format
• Streaming or piping decoded frames to other components

📚 Examples

Complete sample applications are available in the FFmpeg.Examples repository.

The examples range from low-level usage of the FFmpeg API to the higher-level abstractions provided by FFmpegDotNet, making them a good starting point for learning the library.

Examples include:

• Opening media files with DemuxerContext
• Decoding audio and video streams
• Reading and writing media containers
• Audio resampling with SwrContext
• Image scaling and pixel format conversion with SwsContext
• Using MediaSource for simplified decoding
• Encoding
• Filters

The examples are intentionally kept small and focused, with each project demonstrating a single feature or workflow.

➡️ Source Code: https://github.com/Pascal-Krenckel/FFmpeg.Examples