Ffmpeg, oh how I despise thee...



  • I have been learning the ffmpeg API because it has one key redeeming quality - I hate it slightly less than I hate QuickTime.  (And, of course, it's more portable that QuickTime.)

     Unfortunately, learning it has sometimes been a challenge for me.  There are few simple, easy examples, and only minimal documentation.  Here is a comment from one of the examples that comes from a current SVN checkout of ffmpeg.  The top of the file indicates it was written in 2003.

     /* raw video case. The API will change slightly in the near
               futur for that */

     The example is fileld with similar notes like that.  I have no idea if the notes date back to 2003, or if the code still reflects the comments.  Theoretically, I could dig through the SVN history of the file, but it just seems like so much work for what should be a useful learning example.  Some more comments from the file:

    /* XXX: API change will be done */


        /* ugly hack for PCM codecs (will be removed ASAP with new PCM
           support to compute the input frame size in samples */ 



  • @forkazoo said:

    I have been learning the ffmpeg API because it has [b]one[/b] key redeeming quality - I hate it slightly less than I hate QuickTime.  ([b]And[/b], of course, it's more portable that QuickTime.)
    NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.



  • @forkazoo said:

        /* ugly hack for PCM codecs (will be removed ASAP with new PCM
           support to compute the input frame size in samples */ 
    Well, to be fair, "ASAP" in such cases often does mean "maybe within ten years at most, dear God let it be so".  So the comment might, in fact, be entirely correct and up to date.



  • @vyznev said:

    @forkazoo said:

        /* ugly hack for PCM codecs (will be removed ASAP with new PCM
           support to compute the input frame size in samples */ 
    Well, to be fair, "ASAP" in such cases often does mean "maybe within ten years at most, dear God let it be so".  So the comment might, in fact, be entirely correct and up to date.

     

    Yes, indeed.  Far too many people forget that ASAP means "As Soon As Possible", not "In A Very Short Period Of Time".




  • I believe best practices are to use GStreamer or something else that provides wrappers.

    Off topic, isn't it great that everyone here can spell?



  • @Steve The Cynic said:

    Yes, indeed.  Far too many people forget that ASAP means "As Soon As Possible", not "In A Very Short Period Of Time".
    Try not to enlighten too many of them, I exploit that all the time :)



  • @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    @Steve The Cynic said:
    Yes, indeed.  Far too many people forget that ASAP means "As Soon As Possible", not "In A Very Short Period Of Time".
    Try not to enlighten too many of them, I exploit that all the time :)
     

    Sure thing. I'll do it IAVSPOT.

    In other news, my home theater setup has been through every damn video player and codec known to man. I'm doing software decode of h.264 rips of blurays, and while the hardware is more than up to the task, players fall all over themselves constantly. You get judder, you get desynch, you get some formats working and not others, you get color problems...

    So I've been going more and more into uber control: Reclock, MPCHC and special setups and plugins, ffdshow, blah blah...

    Finally I got fed up with persistent judder even with clock matching, specific refresh rates driving my CRT PJ, etc. It'd worked before and stopped,... ARGH!

    I gave up and said, WTF, I'll try Media Center 7. And wham, after a black level fix it was perfect. Perfectly smooth with no dropped frames, actually skipped around in the file without crashing or busing the video into macroblocks, played audio perfectly...

    Go figure. Every open source option in the books, with dozens of hours of config and special setup.... Eclipsed by 10 minutes with WMC7. I guess it really is better than it was in Vista.



  • @PeriSoft said:

    @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    @Steve The Cynic said:
    Yes, indeed.  Far too many people forget that ASAP means "As Soon As Possible", not "In A Very Short Period Of Time".
    Try not to enlighten too many of them, I exploit that all the time :)
     

    Sure thing. I'll do it IAVSPOT.

    In other news, my home theater setup has been through every damn video player and codec known to man. I'm doing software decode of h.264 rips of blurays, and while the hardware is more than up to the task, players fall all over themselves constantly. You get judder, you get desynch, you get some formats working and not others, you get color problems...

    So I've been going more and more into uber control: Reclock, MPCHC and special setups and plugins, ffdshow, blah blah...

    Finally I got fed up with persistent judder even with clock matching, specific refresh rates driving my CRT PJ, etc. It'd worked before and stopped,... ARGH!

    I gave up and said, WTF, I'll try Media Center 7. And wham, after a black level fix it was perfect. Perfectly smooth with no dropped frames, actually skipped around in the file without crashing or busing the video into macroblocks, played audio perfectly...

    Go figure. Every open source option in the books, with dozens of hours of config and special setup.... Eclipsed by 10 minutes with WMC7. I guess it really is better than it was in Vista.

    You mean a product you had to pay money for is higher quality than ones that are free? Holy shit man, we better get Fox News on this now!

    Seriously, any open-source project that isn't a programming language or RDBMS, and has less than a million users, is simply an invitation to pain. Hell, when I was working with Asterisk, there were days I felt that taking a cheese grater to my dick would've been both more fun and more profitable.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    You mean a product you had to pay money for is higher quality than ones that are free?

    You probably got it bundled with your computer, so it still goes in the "free" bucket.

    On a related note, Windows Live Mail works much better than Thunderbird 3. And it's also free. (Although that one you have to download, it's not on the disk anymore.)

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Hell, when I was working with Asterisk, there were days I felt that taking a cheese grater to my dick would've been both more fun and more profitable.

    I've worked with Asterisk before. I think I can verify your cheese grater theory.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Windows Live Mail works much better than Thunderbird 3
     

    Elabosplain plx!

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    On a related note, Windows Live Mail works much better than Thunderbird 3. And it's also free.

    I'm gradually accumulating a list of software that I'd really like to use, but it lacks one crucial feature that a generally inferior competing product has. Windows Live Mail is on this list because it's completely incapable of connecting to an IMAP server using TLS authentication, while Thunderbird can do it just fine.


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