How do VLC and ffmpeg work together?

Question

I compiled VLC from the source code and it works well. When I do \". / Vlc\" vlc runs. I also compiled ffmpeg from source and it works well too. When I do \"ffmpeg-i-f toto.flv

Answer 1

Is there a ffmpeg command to play (read) a video?

ffplay video.mp4

ffplay is however a very stripped down video viewer, mostly only suitable for debugging video things and not for daily usage.

ffplay may be more accurate than VLC for some quirky formats, for example it can handle very low FPS video where VLC 2.2.4 could not: How to resize a picture using ffmpeg's sws_scale()?

Tested in Ubuntu 16.04, ffmpeg 2.8 with this minimal procedurally generated videos from: How to resize a picture using ffmpeg's sws_scale()?

Answer 2

VLC does not embed FFmpeg as a sort of slave binary used internally, as you possibly could suppose. Instead, both FFmpeg and VLC are using libavcodec, a library which implement what ffmpeg exposes through its command line interface. So, FFmpeg supports VLC through supplying its libavcodec library to be one of the essential components on which the VLC is built as a player app.