[FFmpeg-user] Why FFmpeg provides it's own decoder, but relies on 3rd party encoders?

[Sven C. Dack]

On 11/10/16 23:42, Alexey Eromenko wrote:
> The important encoders I use myself are libmp3lame, libvpx, libx264,
> libx265 and more...
>
> Except for AAC audio codec, everything else uses 3rd party encoders,
> but decoders for ffmpeg are built-in, right ?
>
> Why so ? Because encoders improve faster than decoders ? Or because
> encoders are more buggy, so you prefer to update them more frequently
> ?
>
> Just wanna know a bit of background about political and/or technical
> design decision of times past.
>
Decoders are usually much easier to implement, need to follow minimal hardware 
requirements in order to run on many platforms and so are less complex than the 
encoders.

There is also libfdk_aac, which implements an external AAC encoders if this is 
of interest to.