RFC: libav, ffmpeg, and OE-Core

RFC: libav, ffmpeg, and OE-Core

[Paul Eggleton]

Hi all,

Video decoding is an important function for a lot of devices. We currently
have gst-ffmpeg, which includes the ffmpeg sources, in OE-Core but we don't have
ffmpeg or libav itself that is a bit more re-usable outside of GStreamer. This
brings up a few questions:

1) Which is the preferred option for OE; ffmpeg or its "fork" libav? libav
seems to be better suited to use as a library but on the other hand ffmpeg
isn't exactly dead. Some background:

http://aballier.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/ffmpeg-vs-libav-a-distribution-maintainer-point-of-view-almost-two-years-after-the-split/

http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html

2) Following on from that, should we pull the preferred library into OE-Core
and avoid the need for the current bbappend in meta-oe for gst-ffmpeg? (One of
my personal motivations for sorting this out). This would of course be
protected by LICENSE_FLAGS as we currently do with gst-ffmpeg.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Paul



-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre

Re: RFC: libav, ffmpeg, and OE-Core

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2013-05-30 at 20:59 +0100, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Video decoding is an important function for a lot of devices. We currently
> have gst-ffmpeg, which includes the ffmpeg sources, in OE-Core but we don't have
> ffmpeg or libav itself that is a bit more re-usable outside of GStreamer. This
> brings up a few questions:
> 
> 1) Which is the preferred option for OE; ffmpeg or its "fork" libav? libav
> seems to be better suited to use as a library but on the other hand ffmpeg
> isn't exactly dead. Some background:
> 
> http://aballier.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/ffmpeg-vs-libav-a-distribution-maintainer-point-of-view-almost-two-years-after-the-split/
> 
> http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html
> 
> 2) Following on from that, should we pull the preferred library into OE-Core
> and avoid the need for the current bbappend in meta-oe for gst-ffmpeg? (One of
> my personal motivations for sorting this out). This would of course be
> protected by LICENSE_FLAGS as we currently do with gst-ffmpeg.
> 
> Thoughts?

I think having ffmpeg in core might be a good idea since it allows us to
test various video playback and also allows us to test LICENSE_FLAGS in
the core...

Cheers,

Richard

Re: RFC: libav, ffmpeg, and OE-Core

[Koen Kooi]

Op 30 mei 2013 om 21:59 heeft Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton@linux.intel.com> het volgende geschreven:

> Hi all,
> 
> Video decoding is an important function for a lot of devices. We currently
> have gst-ffmpeg, which includes the ffmpeg sources, in OE-Core but we don't have
> ffmpeg or libav itself that is a bit more re-usable outside of GStreamer. This
> brings up a few questions:
> 
> 1) Which is the preferred option for OE; ffmpeg or its "fork" libav? libav
> seems to be better suited to use as a library but on the other hand ffmpeg
> isn't exactly dead. Some background:
> 
> http://aballier.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/ffmpeg-vs-libav-a-distribution-maintainer-point-of-view-almost-two-years-after-the-split/
> 
> http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html

All the developers I have worked with moved to libav. So from a cross-compile and testing point of view libav is the way to go since the buildsystem person and funky architecture people have moved there. I am very biased on this however :)

> 2) Following on from that, should we pull the preferred library into OE-Core
> and avoid the need for the current bbappend in meta-oe for gst-ffmpeg? (One of
> my personal motivations for sorting this out).

I can't make up my mind on that. On one hand it shouldn't be in oe-core since it's just fluff, but on the other hand having libav in oe-core would make a strong case to have everything working with libav and avoid having to have both ffmpeg and libav recipes.

> This would of course be
> protected by LICENSE_FLAGS as we currently do with gst-ffmpeg.

I guess we'd need to do something similar to the gstreamer proposal: a ton of PACKAGECONFIG options to allow the recipe to drag in meta-multimedia dependencies.

regards,

Koen

> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Cheers,
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Paul Eggleton
> Intel Open Source Technology Centre
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