FFmpeg.NET

March 28, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

FFmpeg.NET provides a straightforward interface for handling media data, making tasks such as converting, slicing and editing both audio and video completely effortless.

Under the hood, FFmpeg.NET is a .NET wrapper for FFmpeg; a free (LGPLv2.1) multimedia framework containing multiple audio and video codecs, supporting muxing, demuxing and transcoding tasks on many media formats.

The library targets netstandard2.1, is fully async, thread-safe, and works cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS).

Packages

PackageNuGet
xFFmpeg.NETPackage Version Package Downloads

Contents

  1. Features
  2. Get started
  3. Samples
  4. Licensing

Features

  • Transcode audio & video into other formats using parameters such as:
    • Bit rate
    • Frame rate
    • Resolution (predefined sizes or custom width/height)
    • Aspect ratio
    • Seek position
    • Duration
    • Sample rate
    • Media format
    • Codec presets & profiles (ultrafast to veryslow, baseline to high444)
    • Pixel format
  • Resolving metadata (duration, codecs, resolution, bitrate, fps)
  • Generating thumbnails from videos
  • Hardware-accelerated encoding/decoding (CUDA, QSV, DXVA2, D3D11VA)
  • Stream and pipe-based I/O (no intermediate files required)
  • Video cropping, speed control, and audio removal
  • Custom FFmpeg command line arguments via ExecuteAsync
  • Full CancellationToken support on all async operations
  • Progress, error, completion, and raw data events
  • Playlist generation (M3U, XSPF)
  • Convert media to physical formats and standards such as:
    • Standards include: FILM, PAL & NTSC
    • Mediums include: DVD, DV, DV50, VCD & SVCD

Get started

You need to provide the FFmpeg executable path to the Engine constructor, or ensure ffmpeg is available in your system PATH.

dotnet add package xFFmpeg.NET

Or via the Package Manager Console:

PM> Install-Package xFFmpeg.NET

Samples

Grab thumbnail from a video

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("thumbnail.jpg");

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
// Saves the frame located on the 15th second of the video.
var options = new ConversionOptions { Seek = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15) };
await ffmpeg.GetThumbnailAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Retrieve metadata

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
var metadata = await ffmpeg.GetMetaDataAsync(inputFile, CancellationToken.None);

Console.WriteLine($"Duration: {metadata.Duration}");
Console.WriteLine($"Video: {metadata.VideoData?.Format} {metadata.VideoData?.FrameSize} @ {metadata.VideoData?.Fps} fps");
Console.WriteLine($"Audio: {metadata.AudioData?.Format} {metadata.AudioData?.SampleRate} {metadata.AudioData?.ChannelOutput}");

Basic conversion

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video.mkv");

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, CancellationToken.None);

H.264 encoding with presets and profiles

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video_h264.mp4");

var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    VideoCodec = VideoCodec.libx264,
    VideoCodecPreset = VideoCodecPreset.fast,
    VideoCodecProfile = VideoCodecProfile.main,
    VideoBitRate = 4000,
    VideoFps = 30,
    VideoSize = VideoSize.Hd1080,
    VideoAspectRatio = VideoAspectRatio.R16_9,
    AudioSampleRate = AudioSampleRate.Hz48000,
    AudioBitRate = 192,
    ExtraArguments = "-movflags +faststart"
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Extract audio from video

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("audio.mp3");

var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    AudioBitRate = 320,
    AudioSampleRate = AudioSampleRate.Hz44100
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Hardware-accelerated conversion

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video_gpu.mp4");

// NVIDIA CUDA acceleration
var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    HWAccel = HWAccel.cuda,
    VideoCodec = VideoCodec.h264_nvenc,
    VideoBitRate = 5000,
    VideoSize = VideoSize.Hd1080
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Cut video down to smaller length

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("clip.mp4");

var options = new ConversionOptions();

// Creates a 25 second clip, starting from the 30th second of the original video.
options.CutMedia(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30), TimeSpan.FromSeconds(25));

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Crop video

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video_cropped.mp4");

var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    SourceCrop = new CropRectangle { X = 100, Y = 50, Width = 1280, Height = 720 }
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Change video speed

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video_fast.mp4");

var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    // 0.5 = 2x speed, 2.0 = half speed
    VideoTimeScale = 0.5
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

Convert using streams

// Convert to a MemoryStream (no output file needed)
var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var options = new ConversionOptions
{
    VideoCodec = VideoCodec.libx264,
    VideoSize = VideoSize.Hd720
};

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
using var outputStream = await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, options, CancellationToken.None);

// Or pipe a .NET Stream into FFmpeg as input
await using var fileStream = File.OpenRead("video.mp4");
await using var streamInput = new StreamInput(fileStream);

var output = new OutputFile("converted.mkv");
await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(streamInput, output, CancellationToken.None);

Custom FFmpeg arguments

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");

// Run any FFmpeg command directly
await ffmpeg.ExecuteAsync("-i input.mp4 -vn -acodec libmp3lame -q:a 2 output.mp3", CancellationToken.None);

// With a working directory
await ffmpeg.ExecuteAsync("-i input.mp4 -c copy output.mkv", "/path/to/media", CancellationToken.None);

CancellationToken support

using var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5));

var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
var outputFile = new OutputFile("video.mkv");

var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");

try
{
    await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, cts.Token);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Conversion was cancelled or timed out.");
}

Subscribe to events

public async Task StartConverting()
{
    var inputFile = new InputFile("video.mp4");
    var outputFile = new OutputFile("video.mkv");

    var ffmpeg = new Engine("/usr/bin/ffmpeg");
    ffmpeg.Progress += OnProgress;
    ffmpeg.Data += OnData;
    ffmpeg.Error += OnError;
    ffmpeg.Complete += OnComplete;
    await ffmpeg.ConvertAsync(inputFile, outputFile, CancellationToken.None);
}

private void OnProgress(object sender, ConversionProgressEventArgs e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("[{0} => {1}]", e.Input.Name, e.Output.Name);
    Console.WriteLine("Bitrate: {0}", e.Bitrate);
    Console.WriteLine("Fps: {0}", e.Fps);
    Console.WriteLine("Frame: {0}", e.Frame);
    Console.WriteLine("ProcessedDuration: {0}", e.ProcessedDuration);
    Console.WriteLine("Size: {0} kb", e.SizeKb);
    Console.WriteLine("TotalDuration: {0}\n", e.TotalDuration);
}

private void OnData(object sender, ConversionDataEventArgs e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("[{0} => {1}]: {2}", e.Input.Name, e.Output.Name, e.Data);
}

private void OnComplete(object sender, ConversionCompleteEventArgs e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Completed conversion from {0} to {1} (ffmpeg {2})", e.Input.Name, e.Output.Name, e.FFmpegVersion);
}

private void OnError(object sender, ConversionErrorEventArgs e)
{
    Console.WriteLine("[{0} => {1}]: Error: {2} (ffmpeg {3})\n{4}", e.Input.Name, e.Output.Name, e.Exception.ExitCode, e.FFmpegVersion, e.Exception.InnerException);
}

Licensing