Using FFmpeg in .net?

Question

So i know its a fairly big challenge but i want to write a basic movie player/converter in c# using the FFmpeg library. However the first obstacle i need to overcome is wrapping the FFmpeg library in c#. I downloaded ffmpeg but couldn't compile it on windows, so i downloaded a precompiled version for me. Ok awesome. Then i started looking for c# wrappers.

I have looked around and have found a few wrappers such as SharpFFmpeg (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sharpffmpeg/) and ffmpeg-sharp (http://code.google.com/p/ffmpeg-sharp/). First of all i wanted to use ffmpeg-sharp as its LGPL and SharpFFmpeg is GPL. However it had quite a few compile errors. Turns out it was written for the mono compiler, i tried compiling it with mon but couldn't figure out how. I then started to manually fix the compiler errors myself, but came across a few scary ones and thought i'd better leave those alone. So i gave up on ffmpeg-sharp.

Then i looked at SharpFFmpeg and it looks like what i want, all the functions P/Invoked for me. However its GPL? Both the AVCodec.cs and AVFormat.cs files look like ports of avcodec.c and avformat.c which i reckon i could port myself? Then not have to worry about licencing.

But i wan't to get this right before i go ahead and start coding. Should I:

1. Write my own c++ library for interacting with ffmpeg, then have my c# program talk to the c++ library in order to play/convert videos etc.

OR

1. Port avcodec.h and avformat.h (is that all i need?) to c# by using a whole lot of DllImports and write it entirely in c#?

First of all consider that i'm not great at c++ as i rarely use it but i know enough to get around. The reason i'm thinking #1 might be the better option is that most FFmpeg tutorials are in c++ and i'd also have more control over memory management than if i was to do it in c#.

What do you think? Also would you happen to have any usefull links (perhaps a tutorial) for using FFmpeg?

EDIT: spelling mistakes

Answer 1

a few other managed wrappers for you to check out

• FFMpeg.NET
• FFMpeg-Sharp
• FFLib.NET

Writing your own interop wrappers can be a time-consuming and difficult process in .NET. There are some advantages to writing a C++ library for the interop - particularly as it allows you to greatly simplify the interface that the C# code. However, if you are only needing a subset of the library, it might make your life easier to just do the interop in C#.

Answer 2

Why don't you do something like C# -> DirectShow -> FFMPEG?

This may be offtopic but also make sure you do not end up on http://ffmpeg.org/shame.html

Answer 3

You can try a simple ffmpeg wrapper .NET from here : http://ivolo.mit.edu/post/Convert-Audio-Video-to-Any-Format-using-C.aspx