astiencoder is an open source video encoder written in GO and based on ffmpeg C bindings.

Right now this project has only been tested on FFMpeg 4.1.1.

Why use this project when I can use ffmpeg binary?

In most cases you won't need this project as the ffmpeg binary is pretty awesome.

However, this project could be useful to you if you're looking to:

• understand how the video encoding process work
• integrate your video encoder in a GO ecosystem
• visualize your encoding workflow and statuses/stats of nodes in real time
• communicate with the encoder through an HTTP API + websocket to tweak behaviours in real time
• use native GO subtitle libraries like astisub
• build your own video encoder and take control of its workflow

How is this project structured?

The encoder framework

At the root of the project, package astiencoder provides the framework to build a Workflow Pool that can manage several Workflows.

At this point, Workflows are made of Nodes that can start/pause/continue/stop any kind of work.

The Workflow Pool can serve both an HTTP API and WebSocket events to interact with Workflows and Nodes.

All internal Events can be handled with the proper EventHandler.

The libav wrapper

In folder libav, package astilibav provides the proper nodes to use the ffmpeg C bindings with the encoder:

• Opener
• Demuxer
• Decoder
• Filterer
• Encoder
• Muxer
• PktDumper

At this point the way you connect those nodes is up to you since they implement 2 main interfaces:

type PktHandler interface {
	HandlePkt(p *PktHandlerPayload)
}

type FrameHandler interface {
	HandleFrame(p *FrameHandlerPayload)
}

The out-of-the-box encoder

In folder astiencoder, package main provides an out-of-the-box encoder using both packages astiencoder and astilibav.

It creates workflows based on Jobs.

It's a good place to start digging if you're looking to implement your own workflow builder.

How do I install this project?

FFMpeg

In order to use the ffmpeg C bindings, you need to install ffmpeg. To do so, run the following command:

$ make install-ffmpeg

In some cases, you'll need to enable/disable libs explicitly. To do so, use the configure placeholder. For instance this will install the libx264 as well:

$ make install-ffmpeg configure="--enable-libx264 --enable-gpl"

Astiencoder

Simply run the following command:

$ go get github.com/asticode/go-astiencoder/...

Test everything is working fine

Simply run the following command:

$ make version

It should print something like:

avcodec: 3805796
avdevice: 3801956
avfilter: 462948
avutil: 3673700
resample: GPL version 2 or later
swscale: 328036

How can I run the out-of-the-box encoder?

Modes

The out-of-the-box encoder has 2 modes:

• by default it will spawn the server and wait for a new workflow to be added manually
• when provided with the -j flag, it will open the provided json-formatted job, transform it into a workflow, execute it and exit once everything is done

To run the default mode, simply run the following command:

$ make server

Web UI

Whatever mode you're in, you can open the Web UI in order to see your node's stats.

By default it's accessible at http://127.0.0.1:4000 but you can change it using the encoder configuration.

What do those stats mean?

Nodes use the same stats:

• Incoming rate: the number of incoming object received per second. This is either packets per second (pps) or frames per second (fps).
• Listen ratio: the percentage of time spent waiting for a new incoming object
• Dispatch ratio: the percentage of time spent waiting for all children to be available to process the output object.
• Work ratio: the percentage of time spent doing some actual work

That way you can monitor the efficiency of your workflow and see which node needs work.

How can I run examples?

Examples are located in the examples folder and consists of json-formatted jobs.

If you want to run a specific example, run the following command:

$ make example=<name of the example>

File outputs will be written in the examples/tmp folder.

WARNING: for the following examples you will need specific ffmpeg libs enabled. Again, in order to do so, use the configure placeholder as mentioned here:

• encode: --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl

How can I build my own workflow?

I'd recommend to get inspiration from the out-of-the-box encoder's workflow builder.

Which ffmpeg C bindings is this project using and why?

Right now this project is using these bindings.

Here's why:

1. the base project is not maintained anymore
2. this project is a hard fork of #1 but has gone a very different route
3. this project is a fork of #1 but I'm experiencing lots of panics
4. this project is the best fork of #1 even though the last commit is not recent
5. this project is a fork of #4 with interesting additional commits
6. this project is a fork of #4 with interesting additional commits
7. this project has a very nice set of examples

Therefore I've forked #4, added useful commits from other forks and removed deprecated functions so that it works properly in FFMpeg 4.1.1.

I'm not familiar with CGO, which flags am I supposed to provide?

If you're using make, you're not supposed to add CGO flags manually, it will do it for you.

Otherwise you need to provide the proper CGO_CFLAGS, CGO_LDFLAGS and PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variables when running your GO code.

Let say the absolute path to your current dir is /path/to, here are their respective values:

• CGO_CFLAGS: -I/path/to/vendor_c/include
• CGO_LDFLAGS: -L/path/to/vendor_c/lib
• PKG_CONFIG_PATH: /path/to/vendor_c/lib/pkgconfig

Features and roadmap

• copy (remux)
• mjpeg (thumbnails)
• basic encode (h264 + aac)
• stats
• web ui
• proper tests
• packaging (dash + hls + smooth)
• add plugin in snickers
• many others :D

Contribute

Contributions are more than welcome! Simply fork this project, make changes in a specific branch such as patch-1 for instance and submit a PR.