21 engineers on Hacker News describe using FFmpeg first-hand: 3 endorse it, 2 regret it, 0 are mixed.
“I hate ffmpeg though, the UX is just insane, so I tend more towards tools that produce the arcane command structures for me.”
regret · personal · mrguyorama · 2025-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've already tinkered around with ffmpeg ... it will never be able to stream it properly in chunks.”
regret · personal · 8K832d7tNmiQ · 2020-12-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use FFmpeg over libav in the current VLC windows and Mac version.”
endorse · production · jbk · 2015-07-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we run GIF files through ffmpeg and serve them up with HTML5 video [1]. We usually get between 500 and 2000% faster for GIFs.”
endorse · production · Sir_Cmpwn · 2013-11-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“ffmpeg is awesome, and we use ffmpeg as maybe 25%-30% of the work in our encoding chain.”
endorse · production · jon_dahl · 2010-11-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Oh, and we use ffmpeg for video decoding/encoding :)”
neutral · production · PaulDavisThe1st · 2025-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use FFmpeg in LLMStack (low-code framework to build and run LLM agents) to stream browser video.”
neutral · production · ajhai · 2023-12-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use their Docker container support (to get ffmpeg, mostly)”
neutral · production · ceejayoz · 2023-11-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“a script that globbed for "*.mp4" files to feed them into ffmpeg, but ran into and choked on the "._*.mp4"'s”
neutral · production · rollcat · 2023-09-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“after trying 10x different ways ... of executing an external ffmpeg command over several hrs I eventually wrote a one line .bat file”
neutral · personal · dingdingdang · 2023-04-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We also use ffmpeg for some things, lol.”
neutral · production · squeaky-clean · 2021-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use libffmpeg to stream live video from RTSP CCTV cameras and the main sources I used were”
neutral · production · taneq · 2021-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we now use ffmpeg to convert the movs created by AVFondation”
neutral · production · Erazal · 2020-09-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I personally have dabbled with encoding etc using ffmpeg but it is a whole different story doing it in a production environment.”
neutral · personal · codegeek · 2019-12-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“install the app on the server and call it (like ffpmeg, wkhtml2pdf, an epub to mobi app, etc)”
neutral · production · simion314 · 2018-12-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I was left to go back to ffmpeg and VLC.”
neutral · personal · contingencies · 2018-02-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Ryzen's performance in ffmpeg is dismal... we had to stay with Intel for our batch transcoding processes.”
neutral · production · icelancer · 2017-06-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use both, have friends in both side, and we host FFmpeg's git.”
neutral · production · jbk · 2015-07-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“plenty of video editing/conversion command line tools like imagemagick and ffmpeg.”
neutral · personal · BadassFractal · 2013-11-01 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we use OpenCV, ffmpeg etc but we completely steered clear of libVLC due to the GPL licensing”
neutral · production · twelve45 · 2012-11-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Written in Ruby, based on FFmpeg + ImageMagick, handles both video, audio and photos”
neutral · production · lobster_johnson · 2011-10-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?