IFME

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What is IFME?

IFME encodes, remuxes and repackages video and audio. It handles subtitles and font attachments, merges multiple streams into a single file, drops the streams you do not want, and can pull subtitles straight out of another video without extracting them first. AviSynth scripts are supported for advanced processing.

What makes it different is that the encoders are not baked in.

Encoders are plugins

Every encoder is described by a JSON manifest in the Plugins folder. IFME discovers them at startup, so you can update x265, swap in a build tuned for your own CPU, or add an encoder IFME has never heard of — without waiting for a new IFME release and without recompiling anything.

{
  "GUID": "deadbeef-0265-0265-0265-026502650265",
  "Name": "x265 MultiCoreWare (GCC 14.2.0)",
  "Version": "4.1+1-32e25ff",
  "X64": true,
  "Format": [ "mp4", "mkv", "m2ts", "ts" ],
  "Author": { "Developer": "MultiCoreWare", "URL": "http://msystem.waw.pl/x265/" },
  "Video": { /* presets, tunes, rate-control modes, CLI arguments */ }
}

On startup IFME checks each plugin against your machine, skips ones built for the wrong architecture, and can test-run each encoder so a broken binary is caught before you rely on it.

Plugins shipped by default:

Category	Encoders
Video	x264, x265, SVT-AV1, uvg266 and vvenc (H.266/VVC), libvpx (VP8/VP9), Xvid, MPEG-1/2, WMV 8
Audio	Nero AAC, Fraunhofer FDK AAC, exhale (xHE-AAC/USAC), Opus, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AC-3, MP2 (TwoLAME), MP3 (LAME), WMA v2, WAV
Hardware	NVENC and Intel Quick Sync via rigaya; NVENC, Quick Sync and AMD AMF via FFmpeg
Tools	FFmpeg (32/64-bit), MP4Box

Why it still looks like this

The interface is Win32 and GDI+ on purpose. It keeps IFME’s own footprint small so RAM, CPU cache and threads go to the encoder, which is where they actually matter. A modern UI stack would cost hundreds of megabytes while x265 is trying to saturate every core. IFME’s job is to stay out of the encoder’s way.

Download

Source	Notes
SourceForge	Always current — the recommended download
GitHub Releases	Usually current
VideoHelp	Third-party mirror
SoftPedia	Third-party mirror

[!NOTE] SourceForge always has the newest build. GitHub Releases occasionally lags behind, and the third-party mirrors are not maintained by this project.

Running it

• Windows — run IFME.exe
• Linux — run ifme_linux from a terminal

System requirements

IFME requires a CPU with AVX support. It will refuse to start without it. AVX2 is strongly recommended; without it you will get a warning at startup and some encoders will be unavailable.

Windows

• 64-bit Windows 10 or later
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (all versions)
• .NET Framework 4.8 — only needed on Windows 7; later versions include it

Linux

• mono-complete (Mono runtime)

[!IMPORTANT] IFME itself runs on Linux, but the bundled Plugins folder contains Windows binaries. You will need to build your own ffmpeg, x264, x265 and so on, and point the plugin manifests at them.

Recommended hardware

	QHD and below	UHD and above
CPU	Intel Core i9 (10th gen) or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X	same or better
RAM	8 GB DDR4	16 GB DDR4
Disk	—	~70 GB free for UHD/HDR temporary files

32-bit is no longer supported. High resolutions and high bit depths need more address space than a 32-bit process can provide.

Format support

Video codecs and containers

Video	.avi	.mp4	.mkv	.ts	.m2ts	.mpg	.mpeg	.webm	.wmv
MPEG-1	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
MPEG-2	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
WMV-2			✅						✅
H.263	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
H.264	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
H.265		✅	✅	✅	✅
H.266		✅
AV1			✅					✅
VP8			✅					✅
VP9			✅					✅

Audio codecs and containers

Audio	.avi	.mp2	.mp3	.m4a	.mp4	.mkv	.ogg	.opus	.flac	.wma	.wav
MPEG Layer II	✅	✅		✅	✅	✅
MPEG Layer III	✅		✅	✅	✅	✅
WMA						✅				✅
AAC	✅			✅	✅	✅
AC-3				✅	✅	✅
OGG						✅	✅	✅
Opus						✅		✅
USAC				✅	✅	✅
FLAC						✅			✅
WAV	✅					✅					✅

Hardware acceleration

IFME ships hardware encoding for H.264, H.265 and AV1 through FFmpeg and rigaya’s NVEncC and QSVEncC.

[!WARNING] Hardware encoders are much faster, but at a given bitrate a CPU encoder will almost always look better. If quality per bit matters more than speed, stay on the CPU encoders.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/Anime4000/IFME.git

Open IFME.sln in Visual Studio 2022 and build. Newtonsoft.Json is restored from NuGet automatically.

The solution targets .NET Framework 4.8 (C# 9) and contains:

Project	Purpose
IFME	WinForms front end and encoding pipeline
IFME.FFmpeg	Media probing and parsing
IFME.OSManager	Platform abstraction — process control, CPU features, paths
NDesk.Options	Command-line parsing

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Translations are especially appreciated. Language files live in IFME/i18n as plain JSON — copy en-US.json, translate the values, and keep the keys and {0} placeholders exactly as they are.

Current translations: English, 日本語, 简体中文, Bahasa Malaysia.

License

Source code and binaries	GPL-2.0
Mascots and artwork	CC BY-NC 4.0 — drawn by 53C and adeq, property of the IFME Project

[!IMPORTANT] Multimedia codecs may be covered by patents in your jurisdiction, and using them may require royalty payments. Please read PATENTS.md before installing.

Support the project

IFME is free and developed in spare time. If it saves you effort, a small donation helps keep it maintained.

Donate via PayPal

If you donate, let me know on Facebook or Twitter and you will be credited in the Hall of Fame and in the program’s About screen.

Background

IFME started in 2011, when I was a college student trying to compress FRAPS game recordings with x264 for archiving. Friends liked how simple and light it was, and that turned into the Internet Friendly Media Encoder.

It has been maintained ever since — the plugin system arrived so that the encoders could keep moving forward without the application having to be rewritten each time.