Overview

ez-ffmpeg provides a safe and ergonomic Rust interface for FFmpeg integration, offering a familiar API that closely follows FFmpeg’s original logic and parameter structures.

This library:

• Exposes a safe public API; the internal FFmpeg FFI layer uses audited unsafe code
• Keeps execution logic and parameter conventions as close to FFmpeg as possible
• Supports custom Rust filters and flexible input/output handling
• Offers optional GPU-accelerated custom filters (wgpu) and a high-performance embedded RTMP server
• Ships one-shot recipes (thumbnails, GIF, HLS), typed detection APIs (black/silence/scene/loudness/crop), an HDR-to-SDR tone-mapping cookbook (runnable examples/hdr_to_sdr), and experimental frame/sample/packet export and WHIP/SRT outputs (experimental APIs may change between minor releases) — see the crate documentation for details

The transcoding pipeline is ported from FFmpeg's own fftools/ffmpeg sources — same stage semantics, same function names. Migrating a CLI command? See the CLI-to-API mapping.

Version Requirements

• Rust: 1.80.0 or higher (the optional wgpu feature requires 1.85+).
• FFmpeg: 7.1 through 8.x (one build links either major).

Quick Start

Installation Prerequisites

macOS

brew install ffmpeg

Windows

# For dynamic linking
vcpkg install ffmpeg

# For static linking (requires 'static' feature)
vcpkg install ffmpeg:x64-windows-static-md

# Set VCPKG_ROOT environment variable

Linux

# The libav*-dev packages are FFmpeg's development libraries.
# Needs FFmpeg 7.1+ (Ubuntu 24.04 ships 6.x — see docs/INSTALL.md).
sudo apt install pkg-config clang libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev \
    libavfilter-dev libavdevice-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev

Static linking, building FFmpeg from source, and troubleshooting: see docs/INSTALL.md. Shipping a closed-source binary? Package-manager FFmpeg builds are often GPL — check the licensing matrix first.

Adding the Dependency

[dependencies]
ez-ffmpeg = "0.18"

Basic Usage

The equivalent of ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "hue=s=0" output.mov:

use ez_ffmpeg::FfmpegContext;
use ez_ffmpeg::FfmpegScheduler;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // 1. Build the FFmpeg context
    let context = FfmpegContext::builder()
        .input("input.mp4")
        .filter_desc("hue=s=0") // Example filter: desaturate (optional)
        .output("output.mov")
        .build()?;

    // 2. Run it via FfmpegScheduler (synchronous mode)
    let result = FfmpegScheduler::new(context)
        .start()?
        .wait();
    result?; // Propagate any errors that occur
    Ok(())
}

With the cli feature, cli::from_cli runs a supported ffmpeg command directly and cli::emit_rust_code translates one into builder code; unsupported flags fail with explicit errors.

More examples can be found here.

Features

ez-ffmpeg offers several optional features that can be enabled in your Cargo.toml as needed:

• wgpu: GPU-accelerated custom video filters (WGSL shaders, headless-capable).
• rtmp: Embedded RTMP server with native epoll/kqueue and in-process ingest.
• flv: Provides support for FLV container parsing and handling.
• subtitle: Native ASS/SRT subtitle burn-in rendered by a pure-Rust engine (no libass needed).
• async: Adds asynchronous functionality (allowing you to .await operations).
• cli: Strict ffmpeg command-line compatibility subset (run or translate supported commands).
• http-input: HTTP(S) input via rustls (HttpInput); rejects HLS/DASH playlists. Input::from("https://…") still uses FFmpeg's own protocols.
• static: Enables static linking for FFmpeg libraries (via ffmpeg-next/static).
• opengl: (deprecated, superseded by wgpu) GPU-accelerated OpenGL filters.

License

ez-ffmpeg is licensed under your choice of the MIT, Apache-2.0, or MPL-2.0 licenses. You may select the license that best fits your needs. Important: While ez-ffmpeg is freely usable, FFmpeg has its own licensing terms. Ensure that your use of its components complies with FFmpeg's license.