FFmpegGUI 2.2.15

This one has not been updated since March 2021, and the project behind it stopped moving years before that.

It is kept here because a few thousand people a year still come looking for it, and because for one narrow job it does still work.

What follows is what it actually does, what is wrong with it now, and what to use instead.

What It Was Built to Do

FFmpegGUI is a small window wrapped around FFmpeg. You pick a file, pick an output format from a short list, press the button, and it builds the command for you.

Its speciality was audio: taking WAV, AVI or MP3 in and producing AC3, MP2 or MPA out, which is exactly what people needed when authoring DVDs and burning discs.

It also carried a set of device presets from its era, including iPod and Rockbox profiles, which tells you most of what you need to know about when it was written.

The FFmpeg Inside It Is From 2021

The old description of this page promised the latest version of FFmpeg. That has not been true for a long time.

That gap matters more than it sounds. A converter opens media files for a living, and a large share of the security fixes FFmpeg has shipped since 2021 are for crashes triggered by opening a malformed file.

If the files are your own and always have been, the risk is small. If you are converting anything that arrived from someone else, run it through a current build instead.

Which FFmpegGUI Is This?

This is where the page gets confusing, so it is worth saying plainly: the download page offers four files, and they are not four versions of one program.

If that last row surprised you, it is worth reading our comparison of a GUI or a command line before you download anything.

What to Use Instead

The direct replacements. Three programs on this site do what FFmpegGUI did, and all three are still being updated.

FFMPEG Audio Encoder is the closest match if audio was your job here. It is a much larger download because it carries FFmpeg inside it, which means nothing else to install.

SmartFFmpeg is the closest match in spirit: a tiny portable window with presets, which expects you to supply your own FFmpeg exactly as this one did.

FFmpeg Batch AV Converter is the one to take if you have a folder full of files rather than one, which is the job FFmpegGUI never handled well.

Audio specialists, which is what this page is really for. eac3to is the specialist for AC3 and DVD or Blu-ray audio, and it is still maintained.

For everyday audio conversion with a window in front of it, winLAME and fre:ac both cover far more formats than this ever did.

EZ CD Audio Converter is the polished paid option and LameXP the long-standing free one.

If AAC quality is what you are actually chasing, qaac reaches Apple's encoder and beats everything else here on sound at the same bitrate.

A friendly front end for FFmpeg. Shutter Encoder is the closest modern equivalent in spirit, and HandBrake is the one most people should start with.

FastFlix and StaxRip go further if you want control over the encoder itself rather than a preset list.

One quick conversion and nothing more. Avidemux handles cut-and-convert jobs in a couple of clicks, and LosslessCut trims without re-encoding at all.

For a single audio file with nothing to install, our online audio converter does it in the browser.

If You Still Want This One

There are honest reasons to keep it. It is 9MB, it installs in seconds, it has no telemetry, no account and no upsell, and its window fits on a screen from 2008.

People rebuilding old systems, or running a workflow that has depended on this exact tool for fifteen years, are not being badly served by it.

Our look at FFmpeg against the paid encoders is worth a read if you are weighing up whether to move on at all.

Quick questions

The rest of the audio encoders category covers the maintained alternatives in more depth.

Download FFmpegGUI 2.2.15 if you still need it, or tell us what you used it for if you have history with it.