[FFmpeg-user] Does ffmpeg accept input directly from serial ports?

[Zac Harvey]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 4:52 AM, Carl Eugen Hoyos <cehoyos at ag.or.at> wrote:

> Zac Harvey <zachary.harvey <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Also, could you (or anybody else) clarify whether
> > or not ffmpeg can be reading a stream of audio or video
> > from a file that is concurrently being written to
> > (by some other process)?
>
> I have a suspicion that you have to ask your operating
> system this question;-)
>
> And please use a pipe.
>
> Carl Eugen
>
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Carl,

Good point, I guess I should have qualified that a little better!

I guess what I'm really asking here is this: in all the ffmpeg commands
examples I see, there is one or more specific *files* being used for input
or output. For example:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf
"drawtext=fontfile=/usr/share/fonts/truetype/DroidSans.ttf:
timecode='09\:57\:00\;00': r=30: \
x=(w-tw)/2: y=h-(2*lh): fontcolor=white: box=1: boxcolor=0x00000000 at 1" -an
-y out.mp4

Here we have "in.mp4" and "out.mp4", etc.

But I'm wondering about how ffmpeg handles a *streaming* scenario? Does it
use files for I/O, or some kind of memory buffer? And if it uses files, it
*must* allow concurrent reads/writes, otherwise it wouldn't be actual
"streaming", correct? Thanks again!