March 9, 2026
Costco samples vs cutting checks
FFmpeg at Meta: Media Processing at Scale
Meta drops its homebrew for FFmpeg — commenters ask: where's the check
TLDR: Meta upstreamed key FFmpeg features and dropped its internal fork to handle massive video traffic. Commenters applauded the code but demanded money for maintainers, tossing Costco-sample jokes and calls for a “big donation” to prevent underfunded open‑source headaches — a debate over code credit versus cash support.
Meta says it runs the video tool FFmpeg “tens of billions” of times a day, and just retired its in-house version after helping add two features to the public one: faster multi-stream encoding (think: making many video sizes at once) and real-time quality checks. In normal-speak: they stopped using a secret recipe and helped improve the community cookbook.
The crowd? Spicy. The top vibe is: great code, but where’s the cash. One commenter pointed out Germany’s sovereign tech fund has given more to FFmpeg, another demanded a “big donation,” and a snarky critic compared Meta’s post to “eating a full meal off Costco samples.” The fear behind the jokes: underpaid open-source developers can lead to messes (cue references to the recent supply-chain fiascos), so write checks, not just blog posts.
Defenders fired back that Meta did contribute meaningful code and everyone benefits, full stop. As one put it, some folks “glance over the fact they did give back.” Meanwhile, there was bonus drama: a user linked the previous HN post and got mysteriously downvoted, sparking meta-on-Meta chaos. In short: Meta shipped, the code’s better, but the comments want receipts — and maybe a cashier’s check.
Key Points
- •Meta executed FFmpeg and ffprobe tens of billions of times daily for media processing across its apps.
- •Meta previously maintained an internal FFmpeg fork to support threaded multi-lane encoding and real-time quality metrics.
- •Divergence between the internal fork and upstream FFmpeg led to complexity and maintenance challenges.
- •Meta collaborated with FFmpeg developers, FFlabs, and VideoLAN to upstream needed features, enabling deprecation of its fork.
- •Efficient multi-lane transcoding and improved threading (FFmpeg 6.0 and 8.0) reduced compute usage across over 1 billion daily video uploads.