This is my FFmpeg API notes when I was working on audio and video encoding/decoding projects. This note isn’t complete and you may first want to take a look at An ffmpeg and SDL Tutorial. Initialization FFmpeg library must be initialized before using any of the encoder, decoder, muxers, demuxers, and filters. avcodec_register_all. For libavcodec, register all codecs, parsers, and bitstream filters which were enabled at configuration time. av_register_all. For libavformat, initialize and register all the muxers, demuxers, and protocols.