ff-sys

Low-level FFmpeg FFI bindings generated by bindgen. Not intended for direct use; use the higher-level ff-* crates instead.

Project status (as of 2026-03-26): This crate is in an early phase. The high-level API is designed and reviewed by hand; AI is used as an accelerator to implement FFmpeg bindings efficiently. Code contributions are not expected at this time — questions, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome. See the main repository for full context.

Installation Prerequisites

Before building any crate in this workspace, FFmpeg development libraries must be available on your system.

Windows

Install FFmpeg via vcpkg:

vcpkg install ffmpeg:x64-windows

Set the VCPKG_ROOT environment variable to your vcpkg installation directory, then pass the toolchain file to Cargo via RUSTFLAGS or .cargo/config.toml.

Linux

sudo apt install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavfilter-dev \
                 libavdevice-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev

macOS

brew install ffmpeg

Platform Support

Platform	Method	Notes
Windows	vcpkg	`ffmpeg:x64-windows` triplet required
Linux	apt / system libs	Dev packages (`-dev`) must be installed
macOS	Homebrew	`brew install ffmpeg`

Wrapper Modules

In addition to the raw bindgen output, ff-sys ships thin safe-wrapper modules that isolate the most error-prone FFmpeg call sequences:

Module	Wraps
`avcodec`	`AVCodecContext`, codec open/close
`avformat`	`AVFormatContext`, demux/mux lifecycle
`swscale`	`SwsContext`, pixel format conversion
`swresample`	`SwrContext`, sample format / channel layout conversion

These modules are pub(crate) to the workspace and are not part of the public API surface.

MSRV

Rust 1.93.0 (edition 2024).

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0

ff-sys 0.9.0