Getting Libav

Libav has always been a very experimental and developer-driven project. It is a key component in many multimedia projects and has new features added constantly. To provide a stable foundation, major releases are cut every 4-6 months and maintained across at least two years.

Libav Releases

At semi-regular intervals, Libav makes releases that represent snapshots of Libav at the moment the release branch was cut. Between major releases, point releases will appear that add only bug fixes but no new features.

These releases are intended for distributors and system integrators to ensure a stable and secure environment.
Users and downstream developers that wish to harness the latest features in development and keep their application up to date with the new APIs are strongly encouraged to consider to target the master branch (see below), this is the only place in which new development happens.

Libav 12 "Not Enough Trocadero"

12.2 was released on 2017-09-30. It is the latest point release from the 12 release series.

12 was published 2016-10-18, the 12 branch was cut 2016-10-02.

Please give us feedback and use our Bugzilla for filing bugs.

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Libav 11 "One Louder"

11.11 was released on 2017-10-14. It is the latest point release from the 11 release series.

11 was published 2014-12-03, the 11 branch was cut 2013-08-20.

Please give us feedback and use our Bugzilla for filing bugs.

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Libav 9 "Plain 9"

9.21 was released on 2017-01-15. It is the latest point release from the 9 release series.

9 was published 2013-01-05, the 9 branch was cut 2013-01-05.

Please give us feedback and use our Bugzilla for filing bugs.

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Libav 0.8 "Forbidden Fruit"

0.8.21 was released on 2017-10-13. It is the latest point release from the 0.8 release series.

0.8 was published 2013-01-21, the 0.8 branch was cut 2012-01-21.

Please give us feedback and use our Bugzilla for filing bugs.

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Libav Download and Source Code Repository Access

Libav Git

Libav is developed with Git. Given the decentralized nature of Git, multiple repositories from developers and groups of developers are available.

Clone URL Browse URL Maintainer Description
git://git.libav.org/libav.git git.libav.org/?p=libav.git Libav team Main development
git://git.libav.org/libav.org.git git.libav.org/?p=libav.org.git Libav team Website module
Mirrors
https://code.videolan.org/libav/libav.git https://code.videolan.org/libav/libav Libav team Videolan Mirror
git://github.com/libav/libav.git https://github.com/libav/libav Libav team GitHub Mirror
https://gitlab.com/libav/libav.git https://gitlab.com/libav/libav Libav team GitLab Mirror
Developer Trees
git://github.com/lu-zero/libav.git https://github.com/lu-zero/libav Luca Barbato Personal repository with works in progress and experiments
git://git.khirnov.net/git/libav - Anton Khirnov Personal repository with works in progress

You can retrieve the source code through the standard Git client by using the command: 

git clone CLONE_URL libav

where CLONE_URL is one of the Git clone URLs listed in the table above.

Make sure that you do not have Windows line endings in your checkouts, otherwise you may experience spurious compilation failures. One way to achieve this is to run 

git config --global core.autocrlf false

git.libav.org Repository Snapshots

For the git.libav.org repository you can also directly download the source snapshot that we generate each night instead of grabbing a source snapshot from the gitweb URL. This is slightly preferred since it reduces the load on our server.

Alternatively, if you cannot access Git directly or wish to speed up the cloning and reduce the bandwidth usage, we also offer a complete git snapshot tarball that comes with git metadata and version history to bootstrap your local libav.org repository.

Windows Nightly and Release Builds

Nightly and release builds of Libav linked with various libraries are done for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and can be obtained at the following URLs:

Windows builds of official releases
32-bit Windows builds
32-bit Windows builds using pthreads
64-bit Windows builds

Please report any bugs to the bug tracker.

Distribution Status

This table is sorted alphabetically. Please help to keep it up-to-date.

Distribution Package Information URL Version Tracked
Debian https://packages.qa.debian.org/liba/libav.html Release Branches
Gentoo https://packages.gentoo.org/package/media-video/libav Release Branches, git master
Ubuntu https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libav Release Branches
OpenEmbedded http://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/tree/meta/recipes-multimedia/libav git master