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Async Rust wrapper for ffmpeg

Built on tokio with tracing, graceful shutdown, and progress parsing. Three execution modes, full cancellation support, and automatic binary discovery.

Get StartedAPI Reference

Quick start

Get up and running with libffmpeg in minutes

1

Add to your Cargo.toml

Add libffmpeg as a dependency to your project:
[dependencies]
libffmpeg = { git = "https://github.com/charliethomson/libffmpeg" }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["rt", "process", "macros"] }
tokio-util = { version = "0.7" }
2

Set up tracing support

Copy the Cargo config to enable tracing’s unstable valuable support:
mkdir -p .cargo && curl -o .cargo/config.toml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/charliethomson/libffmpeg/refs/heads/main/.cargo/config.toml
3

Run your first transcode

Use the slim mode for simple transcoding tasks:
use libffmpeg::ffmpeg::ffmpeg_slim;
use tokio_util::sync::CancellationToken;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let token = CancellationToken::new();
    ffmpeg_slim(token, |cmd| {
        cmd.arg("-i").arg("input.mp4")
           .arg("-c:v").arg("libx264")
           .arg("output.mp4");
    }).await?;
    Ok(())
}

Explore by topic

Learn core concepts and discover advanced features

Execution modes

Choose between slim, standard, and graceful execution modes

Progress parsing

Parse structured progress updates from ffmpeg output

Cancellation

Use CancellationToken for responsive shutdown

Binary discovery

Automatic ffmpeg/ffprobe detection with env var overrides

ffprobe

Extract media metadata and duration information

Monitoring

Stream stdout/stderr with CommandMonitor

Key features

Built for production use with Rust async patterns

Async-first design

Built on tokio with full async/await support and CancellationToken integration

Graceful shutdown

Send ‘q’ to ffmpeg stdin before SIGKILL for clean transcoding termination

Progress parsing

Structured Progress type from ffmpeg’s -progress pipe:1 output

Tracing integration

All functions instrumented with tracing spans and valuable support

Ready to get started?

Follow our quickstart guide to build your first ffmpeg application with Rust

View Quickstart