FFmpeg vs Pandoc

FFmpeg is free, open-source software for recording, converting, and streaming audio and video on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its command-line tool converts media files between formats, supports local recording, and lists AVI among its output formats. Output protocols include HLS, RTMP, RTMPS, RTP, RTSP, SRT, and UDP. Hardware acceleration is available for encoding and decoding. Decoding support includes Vulkan, VAAPI, and OpenHarmony, and Vulkan codecs can work on implementations of Vulkan 1.3. The Vulkan compute approach supports FFv1 encoding and decoding and ProRes RAW decoding, but only for codecs designed for parallel decoding. FFmpeg’s transcoding components run in parallel, which can improve throughput and CPU use; gains may be limited when one component dominates the processing. The project accepts contributions through its Forgejo instance and offers mailing lists, IRC, forums, bug reports, a wiki, and conferences. Version 8.1 Hoare was announced as available for download on March 16, 2026.

Pandoc is a command-line document converter and Haskell library, offered for free under the GPL. It converts among markup and word-processing formats including Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, Word DOCX, EPUB, and Jupyter notebooks. Readers parse a source into an abstract syntax tree, which writers then turn into the selected output format. Templates and Lua filters let users adjust processing, and Lua can also be used to create custom readers and writers. Pandoc formats citations and can produce bibliographies with hundreds of CSL styles. PDF output uses LaTeX by default, though users can specify another PDF engine. Installers or binaries are provided for Windows, macOS, and Linux, with package-manager and source installation also documented. It can be run through GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD, and official Docker images are available. The official Linux executable is statically linked without dynamic dependencies or external data-file dependencies. Pandoc has no graphical interface; conversions from more expressive formats can lose information, and complex tables may not fit its document model.