What are all codecs and formats supported by FFmpe

Question

I need a list of codecs and formats supported by FFmpeg. Where can I find it?

Answer 1

ffmpeg -codecs

should give you all the info about the codecs available.

You will see some letters next to the codecs:

Codecs:
 D..... = Decoding supported
 .E.... = Encoding supported
 ..V... = Video codec
 ..A... = Audio codec
 ..S... = Subtitle codec
 ...I.. = Intra frame-only codec
 ....L. = Lossy compression
 .....S = Lossless compression

Answer 2

The formats and codecs supported by your build of ffmpeg can vary due the version, how it was compiled, and if any external libraries, such as libx264, were supported during compilation.

Formats (muxers and demuxers):

List all formats:

ffmpeg -formats

Display options specific to, and information about, a particular muxer:

ffmpeg -h muxer=matroska

Display options specific to, and information about, a particular demuxer:

ffmpeg -h demuxer=gif

Codecs (encoders and decoders):

List all codecs:

ffmpeg -codecs

List all encoders:

ffmpeg -encoders

List all decoders:

ffmpeg -decoders

Display options specific to, and information about, a particular encoder:

ffmpeg -h encoder=mpeg4

Display options specific to, and information about, a particular decoder:

ffmpeg -h decoder=aac

Reading the results

There is a key near the top of the output that describes each letter that precedes the name of the format, encoder, decoder, or codec:

$ ffmpeg -encoders
[…]
Encoders:
 V..... = Video
 A..... = Audio
 S..... = Subtitle
 .F.... = Frame-level multithreading
 ..S... = Slice-level multithreading
 ...X.. = Codec is experimental
 ....B. = Supports draw_horiz_band
 .....D = Supports direct rendering method 1
 ------
[…]
 V.S... mpeg4                MPEG-4 part 2

In this example V.S... indicates that the encoder mpeg4 is a Video encoder and supports Slice-level multithreading.

Also see

What is a codec and how does it differ from a format?

Answer 3

You can see the list of supported codecs in the official documentation:

Supported video codecs

Supported audio codecs

Answer 4

Codecs proper:

ffmpeg -codecs

Formats:

ffmpeg -formats