Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
#496 – FFmpeg: The Incredible Technology Behind Video on the Internet
4 hour 23 minutes Posted May 6, 2026 at 10:06 pm.
) – Introduction
) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
) – Weirdest things VLC opens
) – How video playback works
) – Video codecs and containers
) – FFmpeg explained
) – Linus Torvalds
) – Turning down millions to keep VLC ad-free
) – FFmpeg & Google drama
) – FFmpeg developers
) – VLC and FFmpeg
) – History of FFmpeg
) – Reverse engineering codecs
) – FFmpeg testing
) – Assembly code (handwritten)
) – Rust programming language
) – FFmpeg and Libav fork
) – Open source burnout
) – x264 and internet video
) – Video compression basics
) – CIA and fake VLC
) – Ultra low latency streaming
) – AV2 codec and video patents
) – VLC backdoors
) – Video archiving
) – Future of FFmpeg and VLC
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4:23:41
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Show notes
Jean-Baptiste Kempf is lead developer of VLC and president of VideoLAN. Kieran Kunhya is a longtime FFmpeg contributor, codec engineer, and the person behind the now-infamous FFmpeg account on X.
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep496-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/ffmpeg-transcript
CONTACT LEX:
Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey
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Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring
Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact
EPISODE LINKS:
FFmpeg on X: https://x.com/FFmpeg
FFmpeg: https://ffmpeg.org/
VideoLAN (VLC): https://www.videolan.org/
VideoLAN on X: https://x.com/videolan
Jean-Baptiste’s Website: https://jbkempf.com/
Jean-Baptiste’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbkempf/
Jean-Baptiste’s GitHub: https://github.com/jbkempf
Kieran’s X: https://x.com/kierank_
Kieran’s LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3OORhmC
Kieran’s GitHub: https://github.com/kierank
SPONSORS:
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