Howto: Compile the development version of vlc under the latest Ubuntu release

[andrew.46]

Having investigated a little further I can see that Opus encoding is not available from the gui as at the very least it is not yet included in the encoding profiles located in /modules/gui/qt4/components/sout/profiles.hpp. Have to wait a little I guess, good to see that an h265 profile has been added today though...

[andrew.46]

I have worked fairly hard to get x265 neatly packaged and to tell the truth there is still a little way to go and although x265 (or rather h.265 encoding) shows as a menu in vlc it does not function for me yet. Nevertheless below is the prospective section of the guide as it will appear when a few more bugs have been ironed out, you will need to have cmake and mercurial installed of course:

-----------------------------------------------------------
h265 Encoding...

It is very, very early days for the x265 encoder and it is very exciting to be able to sample vlc's early adoption! Use the snippet below to install:

Install:

cd $HOME/vlc_build && \
hg clone https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265 && \
mkdir -v x265/build1 && cd x265/build1 && \
cmake ../source && make -j 2 && \
mkdir -vp doc-pak && cp -v ../COPYING ../build/README.txt doc-pak && \
sudo checkinstall --pakdir "$HOME/vlc_build" --pkgname x265 \
        --pkgversion "$(cmake . | grep "x265 version" | cut -d ' ' -f4 | tr - '~')" \
        --backup=no --fstrans=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default && \
sudo ldconfig && rm -rf $HOME/vlc_build/x265/build1

And when it is time to update, and I would suggest that this should be reasonable often since development is moving along pretty quickly, simply use the following:

Update:

cd $HOME/vlc_build/x265 && hg pull && hg update && \
mkdir build1 && cd build1 && \
cmake ../source && make -j 2 && \
mkdir -vp doc-pak && cp -v ../COPYING ../build/README.txt doc-pak && \
sudo checkinstall --pakdir "$HOME/vlc_build" --pkgname x265 \
        --pkgversion "$(cmake . | grep "x265 version" | cut -d ' ' -f4 | tr - '~')" \
        --backup=no --fstrans=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default && \
sudo ldconfig && rm -rf $HOME/vlc_build/x265/build1

I hope that like me you enjoy seeing the new encoder mature

-----------------------------------------------------------

Hopefully somebody will succeed where I have failed so far and get the encoder working within vlc... and remember to go and make a cup of tea while x265 is compiling or patch yasm as suggested.

[andrew.46]

Weekend updates are now in place:

• Cleaned out the ./configure options for vlc. I have left this empty as vlc seems to have a reasonable amount of autodetection or sensible defaults in place.
• Added in instructions for x265 installation and appropriate syntax for updating. Still does not work well for me with vlc, there is an odd FFmpeg error message and the native encoder does not kick in. Early days yet I guess...
• Temporarily abandoned Acoustic ID as libchromaprint wants a shared FFmpeg, libchromaprint-dev wants to install libav extras and it was all getting a little too complicated for the small gain of playing with Acoustic ID...
• A little code snippet added in to cleanly remove the local FFmpeg, I will add similar for live555 and x264 by next weekend.

Which means that the guide is now firmly up to date and may sail through the rest of the life of Saucy with minimal major changes. Trust Tahr is out in April so I guess this not saying too much

Latest compile:

andrew@corinth:~$ cvlc --version | head -n 2
VLC media player 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (revision 379eb76)
VLC version 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (379eb76)
Compiled by andrew on corinth (Jan 24 2014 11:46:35)

[andrew.46]

Latest weekend updates now in place, a little late but things have been busy here In Real Life™. 3 simple changes:

1. Disabled a few more options with FFmpeg. This idea mostly drawn from the syntax used by the vlc developers in their 'contrib' directory and this source of syntax rules is a rich vein I will be mining over the next little while.
2. Updated the live555 libraries and I have also added in a little code snippet to manually rid the installation of older live555 libraries Not completely necessary but nice to have in place.
3. I have added in cmake-curses-gui after I finally realised that this the Ubuntu package name for ccmake . I am no cmake wizard and I have found that ccmake makes sorting out the options a lot easier...

I have spent more time than I would care to admit trying to make vlc happy with libchromaprint with a succession of sometimes quite spectacular failures (although I like the sed magic I created). If only alienBob would package this and solve all of the problems for me! My 'work in progress version' is below in case somebody cleverer than me can get the whole thing working:

===================================

Acoustic ID....

Acoustic ID sampling identification is a fascinating idea and it is available with vlc and libchromaprint. We will use the latest version that will be compiled against our local copy of FFmpeg:

cd $HOME/vlc_build && sudo apt-get remove libchromaprint-dev && \
if [ "$(uname -m)" = "x86_64" ]; then
  ARCHOPTS="-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING=-fPIC -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS:STRING=-fPIC"
 else
  ARCHOPTS=""
fi && \
wget https://bitbucket.org/acoustid/chromaprint/downloads/chromaprint-1.1.tar.gz && \
tar xvf chromaprint-1.1.tar.gz && cd chromaprint-1.1 && \
sed -i_bak '/^Libs:/ s/$/ -lavcodec -lavutil/' libchromaprint.pc.cmake && \
mkdir build && cd build && \
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DFFMPEG_ROOT=$HOME/vlc_build/vlcdeps/usr \
      -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=OFF $ARCHOPTS .. && \
make && \
mkdir -vp doc-pak && cp -v ../COPYING.txt ../NEWS.txt ../README.txt doc-pak && \
sudo checkinstall --pakdir "$HOME/vlc_build" --backup=no --deldoc=yes \
                  --pkgname libchromaprint --pkgversion "1.1" --fstrans=no \
                  --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default && \
sudo ldconfig && rm -rf $HOME/vlc_build/chromaprint-1.1/build

The little piece of sed magic duplicates part of a vlc patch, not sure if I have ever mentioned my love of sed . Unfortunately fingerprinting currently segfaults in my installation of vlc and remains something that I need to work on further. Any wisdom from those reading will be listened to with great attention...

===================================

I am back at my ashram for a couple of weeks soon so updates may be a bit sparse but I am still enjoying myself immensely plugging away at vlc-git so the updates will continue . First job will be to change x265 to a local installation and and then perhaps have another go at libchromaprint... Latest successful compile:

andrew@corinth:~$ cvlc --version | head -n 2
VLC media player 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (revision a24c2e7)
VLC version 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (a24c2e7)
Compiled by andrew on corinth (Feb  3 2014 21:02:20)

[mc4man]

Haven't been using vlc much lately (other than thru an interesting FF add-on) so have no clue as to how to 'use' chromaprint..?

Have you tried using the repo version ? (it should not require any libav dev files
Edit: - sorry, see now your issue is with libchromaprint0 which deps on libav*...

[andrew.46]

Edit: - sorry, see now your issue is with libchromaprint0 which deps on libav*...

Indeed, and I have followed pretty closely the vlc method of building libchromaprint. Also tried building against FFTW3 which unfortunately also had a few issues under 64bit Ubuntu. Looks like I am not alone though:

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=113054

although the vlc developers are an irascible lot sometimes.... At the worst I will simply wait a little and hope for the code to develope further or hear from others with the same problem and hopefully a solution, Acoustic ID is not exactly a vital addition to testing the development version. I have it working on a Windows installation and so far it has not successfully identified any tracks

[andrew.46]

A few very small updates to the guide this weekend as I prepare for a fortnight at the ashram:

1. Placed removal and update instructions for x264.
2. Started a larger project of improving the syntax of the guide with different sized headings and detailed installation, removal and updating instructions for each section

I have a few small projects when I come back from my retreat:

1. Convert the x265 section to a local installation (as with x264) and no longer build and install the x265 executable. This will avoid future snarl ups with version requirements with x265 although I doubt that x265 will make it into the upcoming Trusty release.
2. Remove the faac option from FFmpeg and install fdkaac instead which vlc can encode with directly, faac is way past its time now.
3. Finish tidying up the syntax of the guide.....

Note: at the moment --disable-vdpau is a quick work around to enable build...

Latest successful build:

ndrew@corinth:~$ cvlc --version | head -n 2
VLC media player 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (revision c3f638a)
VLC version 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (c3f638a)
Compiled by andrew on corinth (Feb  9 2014 13:49:43)

[andrew.46]

Back on deck with a couple of updates for the guide:

1. Added instructions to build the release version 2.1.3 for those who wish to have a look at it.
2. Tested the cli syntax for producing opus files and included this in the 'opus' section.
3. Changed x265 syntax to build the 'release' version .7 and shifted to a local install without the cli binary. Newer versions are breaking the vlc compile and x265 has yet to produce a workable file for me from within vlc anyway .

The --disable-vdpau is still in place but courtesy of alienBOB I may have found the problem with this and hopefully will have this fixed in the next set of updates. For the next update as well I hope to remove faac and use fdk-aac for aac encoding with vlc. Latest successful compile:

andrew@corinth:~$ cvlc --version | head -n 2
VLC media player 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (revision ee6b5ce)
VLC version 2.2.0-git Weatherwax (ee6b5ce)
Compiled by andrew on corinth (Feb 26 2014 09:28:18)

[monkeybrain20122]

I have no problem building with vdpau enabled, is it because you are using a developmental version of ffmpeg? I just build against ffmpeg 2.1.3 (vlc also 2.1.3)

Is there any clean way to handle phonon-backend-vlc? Just wondering.

[andrew.46]

I have no problem building with vdpau enabled, is it because you are using a developmental version of ffmpeg? I just build against ffmpeg 2.1.3 (vlc also 2.1.3)

I actually use the release version of FFmpeg but certainly the development version of vlc. In vlc-git there is an issue with a 64bit installation statically linking against libvdpau which I notice that alienBOB has fixed by adding an extra strip command against the libraries. I have not investigated any further than this and certainly this is a problem for vlc-git and not vlc 2.1.3. It would be nice to see where this issue crept into the source tree...

Is there any clean way to handle phonon-backend-vlc? Just wondering.

Hmmm... I am not familiar with this except to know it is a multimedia 'back-end' to kde. What uses this?