FFmpeg at Meta: Media Processing at Scale

https://engineering.fb.com/2026/03/02/video-engineering/ffmpeg-at-meta-media-processing-at-scale/

by root670 • 5 months ago

4 1 5 months ago

engineering.fb.com

I can't tell what message the blog post is trying to convey. It doesn't read like a particularly open-source-friendly approach.

Maybe I'm getting the wrong impression from how the whole thing is framed. This sentence from the opening sums up the tone to me:

For many years we had to rely on our own internally developed fork of FFmpeg to provide features that have only recently been added to FFmpeg

Like, boohoo for Meta? Could they not have upstreamed those features in the first place? They didn't integrate with upstream and now they're trying to spin this whole thing as a positive "bringing benefits to Meta, the wider industry, and people who use our products"? C'mon.

My take-away from it is not what the article actually says, but what it seems they should've done from Day 0: "upstream early; upstream often".

FFmpeg at Meta: Media Processing at Scale

Related Stories