# ffplay Documentation

# Table of Contents

# 1. Synopsis

ffplay [options] [‘`input_url`’]

# 2. Description

FFplay is a very simple and portable media player using the FFmpeg libraries and the SDL library. It is mostly used as a testbed for the various FFmpeg APIs.

# 3. Options

All the numerical options, if not specified otherwise, accept a string representing a number as input, which may be followed by one of the SI unit prefixes, for example: ’K’, ’M’, or ’G’.

If ’i’ is appended to the SI unit prefix, the complete prefix will be interpreted as a unit prefix for binary multiples, which are based on powers of 1024 instead of powers of 1000. Appending ’B’ to the SI unit prefix multiplies the value by 8. This allows using, for example: ’KB’, ’MiB’, ’G’ and ’B’ as number suffixes.

Options which do not take arguments are boolean options, and set the corresponding value to true. They can be set to false by prefixing the option name with "no". For example using "-nofoo" will set the boolean option with name "foo" to false.

## 3.1 Stream specifiers

Some options are applied per-stream, e.g. bitrate or codec. Stream specifiers are used to precisely specify which stream(s) a given option belongs to.

A stream specifier is a string generally appended to the option name and separated from it by a colon. E.g. `-codec:a:1 ac3` contains the `a:1` stream specifier, which matches the second audio stream. Therefore, it would select the ac3 codec for the second audio stream.

A stream specifier can match several streams, so that the option is applied to all of them. E.g. the stream specifier in `-b:a 128k` matches all audio streams.

An empty stream specifier matches all streams. For example, `-codec copy` or `-codec: copy` would copy all the streams without reencoding.

Possible forms of stream specifiers are:

‘`stream_index`’

  Matches the stream with this index. E.g. `-threads:1 4` would set the thread count for the second stream to 4.

‘`stream_type[:stream_index]`’

  stream_type is one of following: ’v’ or ’V’ for video, ’a’ for audio, ’s’ for subtitle, ’d’ for data, and ’t’ for attachments. ’v’ matches all video streams, ’V’ only matches video streams which are not attached pictures, video thumbnails or cover arts. If stream_index is given, then it matches stream number stream_index of this type. Otherwise, it matches all streams of this type.

‘`p:program_id[:stream_index]`’

  If stream_index is given, then it matches the stream with number stream_index in the program with the id program_id. Otherwise, it matches all streams in the program.

‘`#stream_id or i:stream_id`’

  Match the stream by stream id (e.g. PID in MPEG-TS container).

‘`m:key[:value]`’

  Matches streams with the metadata tag key having the specified value. If value is not given, matches streams that contain the given tag with any value.

‘`u`’

  Matches streams with usable configuration, the codec must be defined and the essential information such as video dimension or audio sample rate must be present.

  Note that in `ffmpeg`, matching by metadata will only work properly for input files.

## 3.2 Generic options

These options are shared amongst the ff* tools.

‘`-L`’

  Show license.

‘`-h, -?, -help, --help [arg]`’

  Show help. An optional parameter may be specified to print help about a specific item. If no argument is specified, only basic (non advanced) tool options are shown.

  Possible values of arg are:

  ‘`long`’

    Print advanced tool options in addition to the basic tool options.

  ‘`full`’

    Print complete list of options, including shared and private options for encoders, decoders, demuxers, muxers, filters, etc.

  ‘`decoder=decoder_name`’

    Print detailed information about the decoder named decoder_name. Use the ‘`-decoders`’ option to get a list of all decoders.

  ‘`encoder=encoder_name`’

    Print detailed information about the encoder named encoder_name. Use the ‘`-encoders`’ option to get a list of all encoders.

  ‘`demuxer=demuxer_name`’

    Print detailed information about the demuxer named demuxer_name. Use the ‘`-formats`’ option to get a list of all demuxers and muxers.

  ‘`muxer=muxer_name`’

    Print detailed information about the muxer named muxer_name. Use the ‘`-formats`’ option to get a list of all muxers and demuxers.

  ‘`filter=filter_name`’

    Print detailed information about the filter name filter_name. Use the ‘`-filters`’ option to get a list of all filters.

‘`-version`’

  Show version.

‘`-formats`’

  Show available formats (including devices).

‘`-devices`’

  Show available devices.

‘`-codecs`’

  Show all codecs known to libavcodec.

  Note that the term ’codec’ is used throughout this documentation as a shortcut for what is more correctly called a media bitstream format.

‘`-decoders`’

  Show available decoders.

‘`-encoders`’

  Show all available encoders.

‘`-bsfs`’

  Show available bitstream filters.

‘`-protocols`’

  Show available protocols.

‘`-filters`’

  Show available libavfilter filters.

‘`-pix_fmts`’

  Show available pixel formats.

‘`-sample_fmts`’

  Show available sample formats.

‘`-layouts`’

  Show channel names and standard channel layouts.

‘`-colors`’

  Show recognized color names.

‘`-sources device[,opt1=val1[,opt2=val2]...]`’

  Show autodetected sources of the intput device. Some devices may provide system-dependent source names that cannot be autodetected. The returned list cannot be assumed to be always complete.

      ffmpeg -sources pulse,server=192.168.0.4

‘`-sinks device[,opt1=val1[,opt2=val2]...]`’

  Show autodetected sinks of the output device. Some devices may provide system-dependent sink names that cannot be autodetected. The returned list cannot be assumed to be always complete.

      ffmpeg -sinks pulse,server=192.168.0.4

‘`-loglevel [repeat+]loglevel | -v [repeat+]loglevel`’

  Set the logging level used by the library. Adding "repeat+" indicates that repeated log output should not be compressed to the first line and the "Last message repeated n times" line will be omitted. "repeat" can also be used alone. If "repeat" is used alone, and with no prior loglevel set, the default loglevel will be used. If multiple loglevel parameters are given, using ’repeat’ will not change the loglevel. loglevel is a string or a number containing one of the following values:

  ‘`quiet, -8`’

    Show nothing at all; be silent.

  ‘`panic, 0`’

    Only show fatal errors which could lead the process to crash, such as an assertion failure. This is not currently used for anything.

  ‘`fatal, 8`’

    Only show fatal errors. These are errors after which the process absolutely cannot continue.

  ‘`error, 16`’

    Show all errors, including ones which can be recovered from.

  ‘`warning, 24`’

    Show all warnings and errors. Any message related to possibly incorrect or unexpected events will be shown.

  ‘`info, 32`’

    Show informative messages during processing. This is in addition to warnings and errors. This is the default value.

  ‘`verbose, 40`’

    Same as `info`, except more verbose.

  ‘`debug, 48`’

    Show everything, including debugging information.

  ‘`trace, 56`’

  By default the program logs to stderr. If coloring is supported by the terminal, colors are used to mark errors and warnings. Log coloring can be disabled setting the environment variable `AV_LOG_FORCE_NOCOLOR` or `NO_COLOR`, or can be forced setting the environment variable `AV_LOG_FORCE_COLOR`. The use of the environment variable `NO_COLOR` is deprecated and will be dropped in a future FFmpeg version.

‘`-report`’

  Dump full command line and console output to a file named `program-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.log` in the current directory. This file can be useful for bug reports. It also implies `-loglevel verbose`.

  Setting the environment variable `FFREPORT` to any value has the same effect. If the value is a ’:’-separated key=value sequence, these options will affect the report; option values must be escaped if they contain special characters or the options delimiter ’:’ (see the “Quoting and escaping” section in the ffmpeg-utils manual).

  The following options are recognized:

  ‘`file`’

    set the file name to use for the report; `%p` is expanded to the name of the program, `%t` is expanded to a timestamp, `%%` is expanded to a plain `%`

  ‘`level`’

    set the log verbosity level using a numerical value (see `-loglevel`).

  For example, to output a report to a file named ‘`ffreport.log`’ using a log level of `32` (alias for log level `info`):

      FFREPORT=file=ffreport.log:level=32 ffmpeg -i input output

  Errors in parsing the environment variable are not fatal, and will not appear in the report.

‘`-hide_banner`’

  Suppress printing banner.

  All FFmpeg tools will normally show a copyright notice, build options and library versions. This option can be used to suppress printing this information.

‘`-cpuflags flags (global)`’

  Allows setting and clearing cpu flags. This option is intended for testing. Do not use it unless you know what you’re doing.

      ffmpeg -cpuflags -sse+mmx ...
      ffmpeg -cpuflags mmx ...
      ffmpeg -cpuflags 0 ...

  Possible flags for this option are:

  ‘`x86`’
    ‘`mmx`’
    ‘`mmxext`’
    ‘`sse`’
    ‘`sse2`’
    ‘`sse2slow`’
    ‘`sse3`’
    ‘`sse3slow`’
    ‘`ssse3`’
    ‘`atom`’
    ‘`sse4.1`’
    ‘`sse4.2`’
    ‘`avx`’
    ‘`avx2`’
    ‘`xop`’
    ‘`fma3`’
    ‘`fma4`’
    ‘`3dnow`’
    ‘`3dnowext`’
    ‘`bmi1`’
    ‘`bmi2`’
    ‘`cmov`’
  ‘`ARM`’
    ‘`armv5te`’
    ‘`armv6`’
    ‘`armv6t2`’
    ‘`vfp`’
    ‘`vfpv3`’
    ‘`neon`’
    ‘`setend`’
  ‘`AArch64`’
    ‘`armv8`’
    ‘`vfp`’
    ‘`neon`’
  ‘`PowerPC`’
    ‘`altivec`’
  ‘`Specific Processors`’
    ‘`pentium2`’
    ‘`pentium3`’
    ‘`pentium4`’
    ‘`k6`’
    ‘`k62`’
    ‘`athlon`’
    ‘`athlonxp`’
    ‘`k8`’
‘`-opencl_bench`’

  This option is used to benchmark all available OpenCL devices and print the results. This option is only available when FFmpeg has been compiled with `--enable-opencl`.

  When FFmpeg is configured with `--enable-opencl`, the options for the global OpenCL context are set via ‘`-opencl_options`’. See the "OpenCL Options" section in the ffmpeg-utils manual for the complete list of supported options. Amongst others, these options include the ability to select a specific platform and device to run the OpenCL code on. By default, FFmpeg will run on the first device of the first platform. While the options for the global OpenCL context provide flexibility to the user in selecting the OpenCL device of their choice, most users would probably want to select the fastest OpenCL device for their system.

  This option assists the selection of the most efficient configuration by identifying the appropriate device for the user’s system. The built-in benchmark is run on all the OpenCL devices and the performance is measured for each device. The devices in the results list are sorted based on their performance with the fastest device listed first. The user can subsequently invoke `ffmpeg` using the device deemed most appropriate via ‘`-opencl_options`’ to obtain the best performance for the OpenCL accelerated code.

  Typical usage to use the fastest OpenCL device involve the following steps.

  Run the command:

      ffmpeg -opencl_bench

  Note down the platform ID (pidx) and device ID (didx) of the first i.e. fastest device in the list. Select the platform and device using the command:

      ffmpeg -opencl_options platform_idx=pidx:device_idx=didx ...

‘`-opencl_options options (global)`’

  Set OpenCL environment options. This option is only available when FFmpeg has been compiled with `--enable-opencl`.

  options must be a list of key=value option pairs separated by ’:’. See the “OpenCL Options” section in the ffmpeg-utils manual for the list of supported options.

## 3.3 AVOptions

These options are provided directly by the libavformat, libavdevice and libavcodec libraries. To see the list of available AVOptions, use the ‘`-help`’ option. They are separated into two categories:

‘`generic`’

  These options can be set for any container, codec or device. Generic options are listed under AVFormatContext options for containers/devices and under AVCodecContext options for codecs.

‘`private`’

  These options are specific to the given container, device or codec. Private options are listed under their corresponding containers/devices/codecs.

For example to write an ID3v2.3 header instead of a default ID3v2.4 to an MP3 file, use the ‘`id3v2_version`’ private option of the MP3 muxer:

    ffmpeg -i input.flac -id3v2_version 3 out.mp3

All codec AVOptions are per-stream, and thus a stream specifier should be attached to them.

Note: the ‘`-nooption`’ syntax cannot be used for boolean AVOptions, use ‘`-option 0`’/‘`-option 1`’.

Note: the old undocumented way of specifying per-stream AVOptions by prepending v/a/s to the options name is now obsolete and will be removed soon.

## 3.4 Main options

‘`-x width`’

  Force displayed width.

‘`-y height`’

  Force displayed height.

‘`-s size`’

  Set frame size (WxH or abbreviation), needed for videos which do not contain a header with the frame size like raw YUV. This option has been deprecated in favor of private options, try -video_size.

‘`-fs`’

  Start in fullscreen mode.

‘`-an`’

  Disable audio.

‘`-vn`’

  Disable video.

‘`-sn`’

  Disable subtitles.

‘`-ss pos`’

  Seek to pos. Note that in most formats it is not possible to seek exactly, so `ffplay` will seek to the nearest seek point to pos.

  pos must be a time duration specification, see (ffmpeg-utils)time duration syntax.

‘`-t duration`’

  Play duration seconds of audio/video.

  duration must be a time duration specification, see (ffmpeg-utils)time duration syntax.

‘`-bytes`’

  Seek by bytes.

‘`-nodisp`’

  Disable graphical display.

‘`-volume`’

  Set the startup volume. 0 means silence, 100 means no volume reduction or amplification. Negative values are treated as 0, values above 100 are treated as 100.

‘`-f fmt`’

  Force format.

‘`-window_title title`’

  Set window title (default is the input filename).

‘`-loop number`’

  Loops movie playback <number> times. 0 means forever.

‘`-showmode mode`’

  Set the show mode to use. Available values for mode are:

  ‘`0, video`’

    show video

  ‘`1, waves`’

    show audio waves

  ‘`2, rdft`’

    show audio frequency band using RDFT ((Inverse) Real Discrete Fourier Transform)

  Default value is "video", if video is not present or cannot be played "rdft" is automatically selected.

  You can interactively cycle through the available show modes by pressing the key <w>.

‘`-vf filtergraph`’

  Create the filtergraph specified by filtergraph and use it to filter the video stream.

  filtergraph is a description of the filtergraph to apply to the stream, and must have a single video input and a single video output. In the filtergraph, the input is associated to the label `in`, and the output to the label `out`. See the ffmpeg-filters manual for more information about the filtergraph syntax.

  You can specify this parameter multiple times and cycle through the specified filtergraphs along with the show modes by pressing the key <w>.

‘`-af filtergraph`’

  filtergraph is a description of the filtergraph to apply to the input audio. Use the option "-filters" to show all the available filters (including sources and sinks).

‘`-i input_url`’

  Read input_url.

## 3.5 Advanced options

‘`-pix_fmt format`’

  Set pixel format. This option has been deprecated in favor of private options, try -pixel_format.

‘`-stats`’

  Print several playback statistics, in particular show the stream duration, the codec parameters, the current position in the stream and the audio/video synchronisation drift. It is on by default, to explicitly disable it you need to specify `-nostats`.

‘`-fast`’

  Non-spec-compliant optimizations.

‘`-genpts`’

  Generate pts.

‘`-sync type`’

  Set the master clock to audio (`type=audio`), video (`type=video`) or external (`type=ext`). Default is audio. The master clock is used to control audio-video synchronization. Most media players use audio as master clock, but in some cases (streaming or high quality broadcast) it is necessary to change that. This option is mainly used for debugging purposes.

‘`-ast audio_stream_specifier`’

  Select the desired audio stream using the given stream specifier. The stream specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option is not specified, the "best" audio stream is selected in the program of the already selected video stream.

‘`-vst video_stream_specifier`’

  Select the desired video stream using the given stream specifier. The stream specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option is not specified, the "best" video stream is selected.

‘`-sst subtitle_stream_specifier`’

  Select the desired subtitle stream using the given stream specifier. The stream specifiers are described in the Stream specifiers chapter. If this option is not specified, the "best" subtitle stream is selected in the program of the already selected video or audio stream.

‘`-autoexit`’

  Exit when video is done playing.

‘`-exitonkeydown`’

  Exit if any key is pressed.

‘`-exitonmousedown`’

  Exit if any mouse button is pressed.

‘`-codec:media_specifier codec_name`’

  Force a specific decoder implementation for the stream identified by media_specifier, which can assume the values `a` (audio), `v` (video), and `s` subtitle.

‘`-acodec codec_name`’

  Force a specific audio decoder.

‘`-vcodec codec_name`’

  Force a specific video decoder.

‘`-scodec codec_name`’

  Force a specific subtitle decoder.

‘`-autorotate`’

  Automatically rotate the video according to file metadata. Enabled by default, use ‘`-noautorotate`’ to disable it.

‘`-framedrop`’

  Drop video frames if video is out of sync. Enabled by default if the master clock is not set to video. Use this option to enable frame dropping for all master clock sources, use ‘`-noframedrop`’ to disable it.

‘`-infbuf`’

  Do not limit the input buffer size, read as much data as possible from the input as soon as possible. Enabled by default for realtime streams, where data may be dropped if not read in time. Use this option to enable infinite buffers for all inputs, use ‘`-noinfbuf`’ to disable it.

## 3.6 While playing

<q, ESC>

  Quit.

<f>

  Toggle full screen.

<p, SPC>

  Pause.

<m>

  Toggle mute.

<9, 0>

  Decrease and increase volume respectively.

</, *>

  Decrease and increase volume respectively.

<a>

  Cycle audio channel in the current program.

<v>

  Cycle video channel.

<t>

  Cycle subtitle channel in the current program.

<c>

  Cycle program.

<w>

  Cycle video filters or show modes.

<s>

  Step to the next frame.

  Pause if the stream is not already paused, step to the next video frame, and pause.

<left/right>

  Seek backward/forward 10 seconds.

<down/up>

  Seek backward/forward 1 minute.

<page down/page up>

  Seek to the previous/next chapter. or if there are no chapters Seek backward/forward 10 minutes.

<right mouse click>

  Seek to percentage in file corresponding to fraction of width.

<left mouse double-click>

  Toggle full screen.

# 4. See Also

ffmpeg-all, ffmpeg, ffprobe, ffserver, ffmpeg-utils, ffmpeg-scaler, ffmpeg-resampler, ffmpeg-codecs, ffmpeg-bitstream-filters, ffmpeg-formats, ffmpeg-devices, ffmpeg-protocols, ffmpeg-filters

# 5. Authors

The FFmpeg developers.

For details about the authorship, see the Git history of the project (git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg), e.g. by typing the command `git log` in the FFmpeg source directory, or browsing the online repository at http://source.ffmpeg.org.

Maintainers for the specific components are listed in the file ‘`MAINTAINERS`’ in the source code tree.