Reporting a Bug To The FFmpeg Project

First of all, please remember that all the developers working on FFmpeg are volunteers, we are not paid for analyzing, debugging, fixing and answering bug reports. While we try our best to create high quality software and be responsive, if you should not get an answer, please consider the above and be aware of the fact that we receive many bug reports and the amount of time it takes to deal with them can be substantial. Nevertheless most issues get resolved, just please understand that there are no guarantees nor promises.

Before reporting a bug, please consider the following items:

FFmpeg is in a state of perpetual development and we do not currently have the person power to backport fixes to official releases. As such, if you wish to query or report a bug, you must try with the latest development branch revision of FFmpeg to confirm the issue still exists.

When writing your bug report, please include (uncompressed):

What you were trying to accomplish (e.g., "I am trying to transcode from this format to that format...")
The problem you encountered (e.g., "ffmpeg crashed" or "The output video was all green")
The exact command line you were using (e.g., "ffmpeg -i input.mov -an -vcodec foo output.avi")
The full, uncut console output provided by ffmpeg -v 9 -loglevel 99 -i followed by the name of your input file (copy/pasted from the console, including the banner that indicates version and configuration options), paste ffplay output only if your problem is not reproducible with ffmpeg.

If you encounter a crash bug, please provide the gdb output, backtrace and disassembly using the the ffmpeg_g debug binary as follows:

gdb ffmpeg_g

In gdb, type 'r' for run, along with the rest of the ffmpeg command line:

r <rest of command line>

When gdb encounters its problem, run the following commands and copy/paste the output into your bug report:

bt
disass $pc-32,$pc+32
info all-registers

With older gdb versions, use disass $pc-32 $pc+32.

Bug Tracker

Once you have gathered this information, you can submit a report to the FFmpeg bug tracker. You should provide all information so that anyone can reproduce the bug. Please do not report your problem on the developer mailing list: Only send bug reports there if you also intend to provide a fix.

Submitting Sample Media

The developers may ask you to provide a sample media file illustrating your problem. In this case, please follow these steps:

If the sample file is too large ( > 10 megabytes), cut it down to size with the Unix 'dd' command:
```
dd if=sample-file of=small-sample-file bs=1024 count=10000
```
and then upload small-sample-file rather than sample-file
Please choose descriptive names like "h264_green_tint.mov" or "block_artifacts_after_seeking.mkv". We already have plenty of "bug.rm" and "sample.avi" to choose from.
Upload the sample to the MPlayer FTP server. Note that our FTP server is write-only, as it would immediately get misused for warez trading otherwise. Do not let this confuse you. Even though you cannot see the stuff you upload, it will be there and the FFmpeg developers will have access.
- Log into upload.ffmpeg.org with an anonymous FTP login.
- cd -> upload
- Create a new directory.
- cd -> your new directory
- Upload a brief text file describing the sample and what is wrong. This is important! If you leave out the text file, your sample will most likely be deleted without further examination.
- Upload the sample.
Email the list and indicate the location of the sample.

Important: Movie files which have been compressed (rar,7z,gzip,...) will be deleted without being examined unless they are raw RGB/YUV/PCM. Furthermore movie files uploaded to services like megaupload, rapidshare or any other similar service will be ignored. We are not willing to spend our time fighting with this ridiculous, bloated and spam-filled crap.