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The MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg are media encoding tools that use advanced features such as Hybrid GPU acceleration, professional production format, xHE-AAC audio, and MPEG-H 3D audio content creation to help improve visual quality and performance. Use cases include both VOD and live production workflows.

The different MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg enable users to create decoding, encoding, and transcoding workflows or services based on FFmpeg.

The following MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg are included with this deployment:

The versions of MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg included in this deployment are free demos. They add a watermark to processed video, limit the multiplexing time, and intermittently mute audio. If you wish to deploy the full versions of MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg, please visit the MainConcept on Linode website.

oncept Plugins for FFmpeg, please visit the MainConcept on Linode website.

Estimated Deployment Time: MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg should be fully installed within 5-10 minutes after the Compute Instance has finished provisioning.

Configuration Options

  • Supported distributions: Debian 11
  • Recommended plan: At minimum, we recommend a 16GB Shared CPU Compute Instance for MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg.

MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg Options

Limited User (Optional)

You can optionally fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited user for your new Compute Instance. This is recommended for most deployments as an additional security measure. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permission when running commands with the sudo prefix.

  • Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user.
  • Password for the limited user: Enter a strong password for the new user.
  • SSH public key for the limited user: If you wish to login as the limited user through public key authentication (without entering a password), enter your public key here. See Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server for instructions on generating a key pair.
  • Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes (recommended). You can still switch to the root user once logged in and you can also log in as root through Lish.

Getting Started after Deployment

Logging In

Once all packages have finished installing, you can login to your instance to access MainConcept’s FFmpeg installation and plugins.

  1. Using the limited sudo user you created during deployment, login to your instance via SSH. Replace LIMITED_USER with your sudo user and 192.0.2.1 with the address of your Compute Instance:

    ssh LIMITED_USER@192.0.2.1
  2. Navigate to the mainconcept directory and view the installed packages:

    cd /opt/mainconcept/
    ls

  3. You should see the following:

    ffmpeg-omx omx sdk

Command Examples

Below are some example commands using ffmpeg:

AVC/H.264 video encoding from YUV:

ffmpeg -r 25.000000 -pix_fmt yuv420p -s 1920x1080 -i "1920x1080p_25p_YV12.yuv" -vf scale=1280:720 -b:v 3500k -c:v omx_enc_avc -omx_core libomxil_core.so -omx_name OMX.MainConcept.enc_avc.video -omx_param "preset=main:perf_level=10:acc_type=sw:[AVC Settings]:bit_rate_mode=0:bit_rate=100000:time_scale=20000000:num_units_in_tick=1000000" "1920x1080p_25p_YV12_ffmpeg.mp4"

HEVC/H.265 video and xHE-AAC audio transcoding from encoded media file:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v omx_enc_hevc -c:a omx_enc_xheaac -b:v 1000k -b:a 32000 -profile:a 28 -omx_name:v OMX.MainConcept.enc_hevc.video -omx_param:v "force_omx_param=1:preset=main:acc_type=sw" -omx_name:a OMX.MainConcept.enc_xheaac.audio -omx_core libomxil_core.so output.mp4

Next Steps

For more information on using MainConcept Plugins for FFmpeg, including command line formatting, see MainConcept’s official documentation and user guides:

For support regarding the tool or software itself, use the information in the sidebar to contact MainConcept’s support or search the MainConcept community forum.