FAQ

What video formats does vidformer support?

In short, essentially everything. vidformer uses the FFmpeg/libav* libraries internally, so any media FFmpeg works with should work in vidformer as well. We support many container formats (e.g., mp4, mov) and codecs (e.g., H.264, VP8).

A full list of supported codecs enabled in a vidformer build can be found by running:

vidformer-cli codecs

Can I access remote videos on the internet?

Yes, vidformer uses Apache OpenDAL for I/O, so most common data/storage access protocols are supported. However, not all storage services are enabled in distributed binaries. We guarantee that HTTP, S3, and the local filesystem always work.

How does vidformer compare to FFmpeg?

vidformer is far more expressive than the FFmpeg filter interface. Mainly, vidformer is designed for work around data, so edits are created programatically and edits can reference data. Also, vidformer enables serving resut videos on demand.

vidformer uses the FFmpeg/libav* libraries internally, so any media FFmpeg works with should also work in vidformer.

How does vidformer compare to OpenCV/cv2?

vidformer orchestrates data movment in video synthesis tasks, but does not implement image processing directly. Most use cases will still use OpenCV for this.