MiniVideo is a small video decoding library developed from scratch in C, bundled with small testing programs developed in C++.
MiniVideo has been tested with several CPU architectures (x86, SH4, mips, arm).
The build system uses CMake. Both library and test programs can be installed into your system.

MiniVideo has been developed in 2010-2011 during an internship I did in the company "httv". Its goal is to provide a source code that is easy to read and to understand, destined for learning purpose. After a clean-up pass, the code has been published early 2014 with httv permission under the LGPL v3 license (decoding backend) and GPLv3 (testing softwares).

The minivideo library can:

• Open video files with various container to demux and remux audios/videos contents.
• Open H.264 video stream and decode them to export intra-coded pictures.

• H.264 / MPEG-4 part 10 "Advance Video Coding"
  • please note that at the moment there is a major bug inside CABAC decoding process being worked on...

• Elementary stream H.264 ("Annex B" format) [.264]
• Elementary stream MPEG-1/2 [.mpg, .mpeg]
• PS (MPEG Program Stream) [.mpg, .vob, ...]
• MP4 (MPEG ISO container) [.mp4, .mov, .3gp, ...] Work In Progress:

• MKV (Matroska) [.mkv, .webm]
• AVI [.avi]

• bmp
• tga
• tiff
• png (if external libpng support is available)
• jpeg (if external libjpeg support is available)

$ cd minivideo/build/
$ cmake ..
$ make

$ su
$ make install # INSTALLATION INTO THE SYSTEM, ROOT USER ONLY

CMake parameters:

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release/Debug
-DCMAKE_BUILD_Mode=Dynamic/Static
-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../cmake/toolchains/xxx.cmake
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/bin

You can also change several build options into the "minivideo/CMakeLists.txt" file.

Do not forget "FindLibMiniVideo.cmake" directory in the cmake/modules/, which defines how to find the library (libminivideoframework.so file) and its header (minivideoframework.h file) In case of problem, it may be necessary to manualy indicate the paths of these files.

$ cd mini_extractor/build/
$ cmake ..
$ make

$ cd mini_thumbnailer/build/
$ cmake ..
$ make

Installation into the system, available for both testing softwares:

$ su
$ make install # INSTALLATION INTO THE SYSTEM, ROOT USER ONLY

$ cd mini_extractor/build/
$ ./mini_extractor -i 'myfilepath' [-o 'mydirectory'] [-a nb_tracks] [-v nb_tracks]

Command line arguments:

-h : print help
-i : path to the input video
-o : path to the output folder, where extracted streams will be saved
-a : maximum number of audio stream(s) to extract
-v : maximum number of video stream(s) to extract

$ cd mini_thumbnailer/build/
$ ./mini_thumbnailer -i 'myfilepath' [-o 'mydirectory'] [-f picture_format] [-q picture_quality] [-n picture_number] [-m picture_extractionmode]

Command line arguments:

-h : print help
-i : path to the input video
-o : path to the output folder, where generated thumbnails will be saved
-f : export format for the thumbnails (can be 'jpg' 'png' 'bmp' 'tga' 'yuv420' 'yuv444')
-q : thumbnail quality (1 to 100 range)
-n : number of thumbnail to generate (1 to 999 range)
-m : extraction mode for the thumbnails (can be 'unfiltered', 'ordered' or 'distributed')

$ cd minivideo/doc/
$ ./generate_doxygen.sh

Open "minivideo/doc/doxygen.html" with your favorite browser.

$ cd minivideo/doc/
$ ./generate_cppcheck.sh

Open "minivideo/doc/cppcheck.html" with your favorite browser.

// UNSUPPORTED for BP and XP profiles

• (FMO) Flexible Macroblock Ordering
• (ASO) Arbitrary slice ordering
• (RS) Redondant slice

// UNSUPPORTED for XP profile

• Data partitioning
• SI and SP slices

// UNSUPPORTED for HiP profile ("HIGH")

• Major bug(s) inside CABAC decoding process (WIP)
• No deblocking filter
• Interlaced coding (also PicAFF and MBAFF features)
• 4:0:0 "greyscale" subsampling

// UNSUPPORTED for Hi10P profile ("HIGH + 10bits samples")

• Sample depths > 8 bits

// UNSUPPORTED for Hi422P profile ("HIGH + 10bits samples + 4:2:2 subsampling")

• Sample depths > 8 bits
• 4:2:2 subsampling

// UNSUPPORTED for Hi444P profile ("HIGH + 14bits samples + 4:4:4 subsampling")

• Sample depths > 10 bits
• 4:4:4 subsampling
• Separate color plane coding
• IPCM macroblocks