Episode Notes

Jean-Baptiste Kempf is lead developer of VLC and president of VideoLAN. Kieran Kunhya is a longtime FFmpeg contributor, codec engineer, and the person behind the now-infamous FFmpeg account on X.Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep496-scSee below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.

Transcript:https://lexfridman.com/ffmpeg-transcript

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EPISODE LINKS:FFmpeg on X: https://x.com/FFmpegFFmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/VideoLAN (VLC): https://www.videolan.org/VideoLAN on X: https://x.com/videolanJean-Baptiste’s Website: https://jbkempf.com/Jean-Baptiste’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbkempf/Jean-Baptiste’s GitHub: https://github.com/jbkempfKieran’s X: https://x.com/kierank_Kieran’s LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3OORhmCKieran’s GitHub: https://github.com/kierank

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OUTLINE:(00:00) – Introduction(03:00) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections(10:48) – Weirdest things VLC opens(15:12) – How video playback works(24:33) – Video codecs and containers(35:20) – FFmpeg explained(56:20) – Linus Torvalds(1:00:59) – Turning down millions to keep VLC ad-free(1:15:17) – FFmpeg & Google drama(1:34:31) – FFmpeg developers(1:41:08) – VLC and FFmpeg(1:45:42) – History of FFmpeg(1:48:59) – Reverse engineering codecs(2:02:14) – FFmpeg testing(2:06:21) – Assembly code (handwritten)(2:30:39) – Rust programming language(2:39:55) – FFmpeg and Libav fork(2:48:17) – Open source burnout(2:56:04) – x264 and internet video(3:09:20) – Video compression basics(3:16:17) – CIA and fake VLC(3:26:52) – Ultra low latency streaming(3:44:20) – AV2 codec and video patents(3:54:12) – VLC backdoors(4:04:27) – Video archiving(4:11:04) – Future of FFmpeg and VLC