Contact Us
Need help with FFmpeg? First, these very important questions:
Are you using the latest SVN version of FFmpeg?
Seriously, FFmpeg is in a state of perpetual development and "official" releases are highly infrequent and largely a formality. The releases do not reflect the state of the FFmpeg's current technology. You should be using the latest SVN checkout or snapshot package.
Have you configured FFmpeg with --enable-libfaac
--enable-libmp3lame?
Most of the times you are missing an AAC or MP3 encoder. Make sure you compile FFmpeg with these flags before you ask for help.
Now then, if you are still experiencing problems with the latest, up to date SVN copy, check out the FFmpeg bug report page. Providing the kind of information requested on that page helps the developers help you with the problem you are reporting. It saves time for everyone. Simply writing "It does not work!" is remarkably useless and inevitably leads to an exchange where the developers must ask you to visit the bug reporting page anyway.
After you have a good bug report, submit it to our bug tracker.
Want to participate in the active development of FFmpeg? Keep up with the latest developments by subscribing to both the ffmpeg-devel and ffmpeg-cvslog lists. If you send us a patch, please make it a unified diff (diff -u), everything else is unusable. For more detailed guidelines, have a look at the MPlayer patch guidelines most of what is written there applies to FFmpeg as well.
Mailing lists
Please follow the netiquette when posting on FFmpeg mailing lists, especially avoid top-posting and thread hijacking. Configuring your mail client to break lines after 70 or so characters is a plus. If you attach files, avoid compressing small files, uncompressed is preferred. Also please try to avoid posting mails with overly long signatures or nonsense corporate disclaimers that claim the content of your mails is confidential. Attached patches should not have application/octet-stream as mime-type, but text/plain or even better text/x-diff or text/x-patch. Trespass these rules at the risk of being flamed.
ffmpeg-user:
This list is for regular user questions like compilation troubles,
command-line issues and similar.
libav-user:
This list is for regular user questions about development with the FFmpeg libraries.
ffmpeg-devel:
This list is for development of FFmpeg itself. It is not for
development of software that use the FFmpeg libraries.
ffmpeg-cvslog:
This list gets all changes to the FFmpeg sources.
ffmpeg-soc:
This list is about development of the FFmpeg Google Summer of Code projects.
Alternatively, you can follow our mailing lists through Gmane.
Mailing list archives
To read up on past discussions, read the mailing list archives. It is highly likely that you will find an answer to your questions there, so make sure to browse the archives before posting questions.
ffmpeg-user archives
libav-user archives
ffmpeg-devel archives
ffmpeg-cvslog archives
ffmpeg-soc archives
IRC channels
FFmpeg has two official channels on the freenode IRC network. Both channels are open and unmoderated. Developers with SVN write access have operator status, contributors with patches in FFmpeg have voice in the channels.
#ffmpeg is for user support and general questions similar to the ffmpeg-user mailing list.
#ffmpeg-devel is strictly dedicated to FFmpeg development. This means development of FFmpeg itself. Development of other software that uses the FFmpeg libraries is offtopic there.
