FFmpegKit (Maintained Fork)

Community-maintained continuation of FFmpegKit, archived by its original author in April 2025.

📱 See it in action — Whisper Demo app

A complete, open-source Android app built with this library: pick any video on your phone and get real-time subtitles generated 100% on-device by WhisperKit, with live FR / EN / ES translation. Clone it, drop in your AAR, and run — github.com/ffmpegkit-maintained/whisper-demo-android

Why this fork exists

FFmpegKit was the de-facto standard for running FFmpeg on Android, iOS, macOS and tvOS. In April 2025, its original author archived the repository and stopped maintaining it, leaving thousands of apps depending on a library that could no longer:

Target Android SDK 35 (Android 15) without manifest/build warnings
Support 16 KB memory page sizes, mandatory for new apps and updates on Google Play starting November 2025
Receive security and FFmpeg/codec updates

This fork exists to keep FFmpegKit alive for the Android ecosystem: same API surface, same package names, but with the build system, native libraries and tooling updated to keep working on current and future Android versions.

We are not affiliated with the original author. All credit for the original design and years of work goes to the upstream project; this fork simply continues maintenance under the same license.

Scope

This fork is Android-only, intentionally. Maintaining a single platform well is more valuable to this project's users than spreading effort thin across all the platforms upstream FFmpegKit supported. Focus areas are:

Android SDK 35 (Android 15) compatibility, kept current as new SDK levels ship.
16 KB memory page size support, required by Google Play for new and updated apps.
Long-term maintenance: security patches, NDK/toolchain bumps, and FFmpeg/codec updates on an LTS-style cadence rather than chasing every upstream FFmpeg release.

Out of scope, intentionally: iOS, macOS, tvOS, Linux, Flutter and React Native bindings. Upstream FFmpegKit's source for these platforms (apple.sh, ios.sh, macos.sh, tvos.sh, linux.sh and their respective directories) is not imported into this fork. If you need FFmpeg on those platforms, look for other actively maintained forks or projects targeting them specifically — this project won't take on that maintenance burden.

Quick start

Three LTS lines

Three build trees are published and maintained in parallel — pick the FFmpeg version that suits your project:

Line	FFmpeg	Free tier (Maven Central)	Paid tiers (Gumroad)
6.0 LTS	n6.0 (stable, long track record)	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:6.0.3`	Basic / Full / Full GPL
7.1 LTS	n7.1.5 (newer codecs, same API)	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:7.1.5`	Basic / Full / Full GPL
8.1 LTS	n8.1.2 (latest stable, FFmpeg 8.x "Hoare") — NDK r27c	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:8.1.7`	Basic / Full / Full GPL

All lines use the same API surface, compileSdk 35, and 16 KB page alignment. The 6.0 and 7.1 lines use NDK r26c; the 8.1 line uses NDK r27c. Each LTS line has its own dedicated Gumroad products — browse the full catalogue at ffmpegkit.gumroad.com.

Add the Free tier

Via Gradle (Maven Central — recommended):

// 6.0 LTS
implementation 'dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:6.0.3'

// 7.1 LTS
implementation 'dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:7.1.5'

// 8.1 LTS (FFmpeg 8.x "Hoare" — latest stable, NDK r27c)
implementation 'dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:8.1.7'

Via JitPack (alternative to Maven Central):

// settings.gradle — add JitPack repository
dependencyResolutionManagement {
    repositories {
        maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
    }
}

// app/build.gradle
// 6.0 LTS
implementation 'com.github.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:6.0.1'

// 7.1 LTS
implementation 'com.github.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:7.1.5'

// 8.1 LTS (FFmpeg 8.x "Hoare" — latest stable, NDK r27c)
implementation 'com.github.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:8.1.7'

Direct download: the prebuilt .aar is also attached to each GitHub release for build systems that don't use Maven Central.

Need H.264/H.265 encode, hardware MediaCodec, or TLS? The Basic tier ($24) adds those. Need on-device speech recognition or subtitle generation? The Full ($34) and Full GPL ($49) tiers add WhisperKit — see docs/WHISPERKIT.md.

For the paid tiers, download the .aar from Gumroad and drop it in app/libs/, then:

// app/build.gradle
repositories { flatDir { dirs("libs") } }

dependencies {
    implementation(name: "ffmpeg-kit-release", ext: "aar")
    implementation("androidx.annotation:annotation:1.7.1")
    implementation("com.arthenica:smart-exception-java:0.2.1")
}

Call site (unchanged from upstream)

FFmpegKit.executeAsync("-i input.mp4 -c:v mpeg4 output.mp4", session -> {
    if (ReturnCode.isSuccess(session.getReturnCode())) {
        // SUCCESS
    }
});

Migrating from com.arthenica:ffmpeg-kit-*? See docs/MIGRATION.md.

On-device speech recognition is available in the 8.1 Full and Full GPL tiers via WhisperKit — transcription, SRT subtitles, and translation to any language without sending audio to a server.

WhisperKit — on-device speech recognition (8.1 Full / Full GPL)

WhisperKit is a new Java API exclusive to the 8.1 Full and 8.1 Full GPL tiers. It brings on-device speech recognition and subtitle generation directly to Android, powered by Whisper.cpp v1.7.5. Audio never leaves the device — no server, no internet connection required for transcription.

📱 Full working demo app: ffmpegkit-maintained/whisper-demo-android — an open-source Android app that picks any video on your phone, generates real-time subtitles on-device, and switches FR / EN / ES live. The easiest way to see WhisperKit in action and a copy-paste starting point for your own app.

Home Real-time subtitles (FR) Live translation (EN)

What it can do

	Code
Transcribe audio → plain text	`wk.transcribe(pcm)`
Transcribe audio → SRT subtitles	`wk.transcribeToSrt(pcm)`
Transcribe + translate to English (Whisper built-in, offline)	`wk.translate(pcm)`
Transcribe + translate to any language via external service	`wk.transcribeAndTranslate(pcm, provider, "fr")`
Transcribe + translate to any language → SRT	`wk.transcribeToSrtAndTranslate(pcm, provider, "de")`

Quick start

// 1. Extract 16 kHz mono PCM from a video using FFmpegKit
String pcmPath = context.getCacheDir() + "/audio.pcm";
FFmpegKit.executeAsync(
    "-i /path/to/video.mp4 -ar 16000 -ac 1 -f f32le " + pcmPath,
    session -> {
        if (!ReturnCode.isSuccess(session.getReturnCode())) return;
        try {
            // 2. Load PCM into float[]
            byte[] bytes = java.nio.file.Files.readAllBytes(java.nio.file.Paths.get(pcmPath));
            java.nio.FloatBuffer fb = java.nio.ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes)
                .order(java.nio.ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN).asFloatBuffer();
            float[] pcm = new float[fb.remaining()];
            fb.get(pcm);

            // 3. Transcribe (GGML model downloaded separately — see docs/WHISPERKIT.md)
            try (WhisperKit wk = WhisperKit.createFromFile(
                    context.getFilesDir() + "/ggml-base.bin")) {

                String text = wk.transcribe(pcm);               // plain text
                String srt  = wk.transcribeToSrt(pcm);          // SRT subtitles
                String eng  = wk.translate(pcm);                 // → English (offline)
            }
        } catch (IOException e) { /* handle */ }
    });

Translation to any language

Two ready-to-use TranslationProvider implementations are included. Both use Android's built-in HttpsURLConnection — no extra dependencies.

DeepL (500 000 characters/month free — get API key):

TranslationProvider deepl = new DeepLTranslationProvider("YOUR_DEEPL_API_KEY");

try (WhisperKit wk = WhisperKit.createFromFile(modelPath)) {
    // Transcribe audio and translate each subtitle segment to French
    String frenchSrt = wk.transcribeToSrtAndTranslate(pcm, deepl, "FR");
}

LibreTranslate (open-source, self-hostable — no vendor lock-in):

TranslationProvider lt = new LibreTranslateProvider();  // public instance
// or: new LibreTranslateProvider("https://your-server.example.com", "API_KEY");

try (WhisperKit wk = WhisperKit.createFromFile(modelPath)) {
    String germanSrt = wk.transcribeToSrtAndTranslate(pcm, lt, "de");
}

TranslationProvider is also a plain functional interface — implement it inline for Google Translate, Azure, or any other service.

Burn subtitles into the video

Transcription, translation, and subtitle burning in a single Android pipeline — entirely on-device for the transcription step, with an optional translation service for any target language:

// 1. Extract PCM  →  2. WhisperKit → SRT  →  3. FFmpegKit burns subtitles
FFmpegKit.executeAsync("-i " + videoPath + " -ar 16000 -ac 1 -f f32le " + pcmPath, s1 -> {
    // ... load PCM, call wk.translateToSrt(pcm) or transcribeToSrtAndTranslate ...
    // write SRT to srtPath, then:
    FFmpegKit.executeAsync("-i " + videoPath + " -vf subtitles=" + srtPath + " " + outputPath, s2 -> {});
});

Note: subtitle burning (-vf subtitles=) requires libass, which is in the Full and Full GPL tiers. See docs/WHISPERKIT.md for the complete working code.

Available tiers

Four separately-built AARs, so you only pay for and ship the codec coverage your app actually needs. All four are arm64-v8a only; see README § Compatibility for NDK/SDK details that apply to all of them. Each tier is built for the 6.0 LTS, 7.1 LTS, and 8.1 LTS lines (see Quick start).

	Free	Basic	Full	Full GPL
Distribution	Maven Central, free	Gumroad, $19 (6.0/7.1) · $24 (8.1)	Gumroad, $29 (6.0/7.1) · $34 (8.1)	Gumroad, $39 (6.0/7.1) · $44 (8.1)
License	LGPL-3.0	LGPL-3.0	LGPL-3.0	GPL-3.0 ⚠️
Build workflows (6.0 / 7.1 / 8.1)	`build-free.yml` / `build-71-free.yml` / `build-81-free.yml`	`build-basic.yml` / `build-71-basic.yml` / `build-81-basic.yml`	`build.yml` / `build-71-full.yml` / `build-81-full.yml` ¹	`build-gpl.yml` / `build-71-gpl.yml` / `build-81-gpl.yml` ¹
Maven coordinates (6.0)	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:6.0.1`	—	—	—
Maven coordinates (7.1)	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:7.1.5`	—	—	—
Maven coordinates (8.1)	`dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:8.1.7`	—	—	—
Android `MediaCodec` (hardware accel)	❌	✅	✅	✅
H.264 decode	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)
H.264 encode	❌	✅ via `openh264`	✅ via `openh264`	✅ via `x264`
H.265/HEVC decode	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)	✅ (native FFmpeg)
H.265/HEVC encode	❌	❌	✅ via `kvazaar`	✅ via `x265`
AV1	✅ `libaom`, `dav1d`	✅ `libaom`, `dav1d`	✅ `libaom`, `dav1d`	✅ `libaom`, `dav1d`
VP8/VP9	✅ `libvpx`	✅ `libvpx`	✅ `libvpx`	✅ `libvpx`
Theora	❌	✅ `libtheora`	✅ `libtheora`	✅ `libtheora`
Audio codecs (Opus, Speex, Vorbis)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Audio codecs (MP3, AMR, MP2)	❌	✅	✅	✅
Images (WebP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF)	❌	✅	✅	✅
Subtitle/text rendering (`libass`, `harfbuzz`, `freetype`, `fontconfig`, `fribidi`) — also covers FFmpeg's `drawtext` filter	❌	❌	✅	✅
OCR (`tesseract`, `leptonica`)	❌	❌	✅	✅
SRT (secure streaming)	❌	❌	✅	✅
Audio fingerprinting (`chromaprint`)	❌	❌	✅	✅
TLS	❌	✅ `openssl`	✅ `openssl`	✅ `openssl`
`xvidcore`, `libvidstab`, `rubberband`	❌	❌	❌	✅ (GPL-licensed)
`zimg`, `snappy`, `soxr`, `libxml2`, Android `zlib`	❌	✅	✅	✅
WhisperKit — on-device speech recognition (Whisper.cpp v1.7.5)	❌	❌	✅ 8.1 only	✅ 8.1 only
TranslationProvider — `DeepLTranslationProvider`, `LibreTranslateProvider`	❌	❌	✅ 8.1 only	✅ 8.1 only

H.264/H.265 note: every tier can play back H.264/H.265 content — decoding is built into FFmpeg itself, not tied to any of openh264/kvazaar/x264/x265. What differs between tiers is whether you can encode/produce H.264 or H.265 output, and with which encoder.

Free is intentionally software-only (no MediaCodec) for consistent behavior across devices regardless of manufacturer hardware codec quirks, while still giving real, modern video encoding (VP9/AV1 via libvpx/libaom, not just decode) for free via Maven Central. Published at dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:6.0.1 (6.0 line, NDK r26c), dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:7.1.5 (7.1 line, NDK r26c), and dev.ffmpegkit-maintained:ffmpeg:8.1.7 (8.1 line, NDK r27c); tag-triggered builds handle publishing automatically.

¹ 8.1 Full and Full GPL include WhisperKit (on-device Whisper.cpp speech recognition) — see docs/WHISPERKIT.md. The 6.0 and 7.1 Full/Full GPL tiers do not include WhisperKit (Android 8.x feature only).

GnuTLS is never included in any tier, on purpose: it conflicts with OpenSSL in FFmpeg's own configure (both provide TLS, only one can be enabled at a time) — see docs/PATCH-NOTES.md.

⚠️ Full GPL tier license note: --enable-gpl adds x264, x265, xvidcore, libvidstab and rubberband, which makes the resulting AAR GPL-3.0 instead of LGPL-3.0. Copyleft applies to your own app if you statically or dynamically link it — review what that means for your project's licensing before choosing this tier over Full. Kept as a fully separate artifact/workflow/cache so it never mixes with the LGPL builds.

Compatibility

State of the main branch source (and of any .aar produced by the CI build going forward):

	6.0 LTS / 7.1 LTS	8.1 LTS
NDK	r26c (`26.2.11394342`)	r27c (`27.2.12479018`)
minSdk	24 (Android 7.0)	24 (Android 7.0)
compileSdk / targetSdk	35 (Android 15)	35 (Android 15)
ABI	`arm64-v8a` only	`arm64-v8a` only
16 KB page size alignment	Enforced	Enforced

arm64-v8a is the only ABI CI builds and publishes; other ABIs are buildable from source via android.sh but not published. 16 KB alignment is enforced with -Wl,-z,max-page-size=16384 — the CI build fails if any .so isn't aligned (see the "Verify 16 KB page size alignment" step in the relevant workflow).

Current releases: v6.0.1-lts-android, v7.1.5-lts-android, v8.1.7-lts-android — all fully up to date with this table.

android.sh has no audio/video/https build presets (those were upstream's historical Maven Central artifact names, not flags this script understands) — this fork's tiers (Free/Basic/Full/Full GPL, see README § Available tiers) are defined by which --disable-lib-*/--enable-gpl flags each workflow passes, not by upstream's old variant names.

See docs/PATCH-NOTES.md and the GitHub wiki for history.

From the same maintainer

Need to download the videos before processing them?

yt-dlp-android — a clean Android library wrapping yt-dlp, supporting 1000+ sites. Solves the impersonation error (The extractor is attempting impersonation, but no impersonate target is available) that all existing Android wrappers hit. Free tier via JitPack; Pro tier with native curl-cffi for full impersonation support.

The natural companion to ffmpeg-kit: download with yt-dlp-android, process and transcribe with this library.

Documentation

CONTRIBUTING.md — how to contribute
docs/BUILD.md — building the native libraries and AAR from source
docs/MIGRATION.md — moving from upstream com.arthenica:ffmpeg-kit-* (Maven Central) to this fork
docs/PATCH-NOTES.md — what changed in this fork vs. upstream, release by release
docs/WHISPERKIT.md — WhisperKit full documentation: model setup, API reference, DeepL/LibreTranslate integration, end-to-end examples
GitHub wiki — FAQ, troubleshooting, and deeper compatibility notes

License

This project is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE for the full text.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 153 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
android-6.0-lts		android-6.0-lts
android-7.1-lts		android-7.1-lts
android-8.1-lts		android-8.1-lts
docs		docs
gradle/wrapper		gradle/wrapper
.gitignore		.gitignore
AGENTS.md		AGENTS.md
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
CONTRIBUTING.md		CONTRIBUTING.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
build.gradle		build.gradle
gradlew		gradlew
gradlew.bat		gradlew.bat
jitpack.yml		jitpack.yml
settings.gradle		settings.gradle

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FFmpegKit (Maintained Fork)

📱 See it in action — Whisper Demo app

Why this fork exists

Scope

Quick start

Three LTS lines

Add the Free tier

Call site (unchanged from upstream)

WhisperKit — on-device speech recognition (8.1 Full / Full GPL)

What it can do

Quick start

Translation to any language

Burn subtitles into the video

Available tiers

Compatibility

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FFmpegKit (Maintained Fork)

📱 See it in action — Whisper Demo app

Why this fork exists

Scope

Quick start

Three LTS lines

Add the Free tier

Call site (unchanged from upstream)

WhisperKit — on-device speech recognition (8.1 Full / Full GPL)

What it can do

Quick start

Translation to any language

Burn subtitles into the video

Available tiers

Compatibility

From the same maintainer

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