HOWTO: Install and use the latest FFmpeg and x264

[andrew.46]

I am searching for a reliable way to download a specific FFmpeg revision for the vlc guide that I run. Currently running with the nightly snapshot but of course this will change every 24 hours and potentially lead to breakages when compiling with vlc. I have been looking at something like the following:

wget "http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=snapshot;h=fbf9837;sf=tgz" -O \
ffmpeg.fbf9837.tgz

and of course this will be able to be checked directly from git-web with the following address:

http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=commit;h=fbf9837

What I am a little unsure about is:

1. Is there a better way to do this?
2. Is it safe enough to use the short hash rather than the long?
3. More importantly will this gather the correct versions of libavcodec / libavformat / libavfilter / libavutil / libswscale / libswresample etc even when this particular revision is weeks old?

Thanks for any input...

[qyot27]

FFmpeg 2.2 shouldn't be too far off, judging from the mailing list. If it needs to be newer than 2.1.3 (2.1.4 now) due to API changes, then 2.2 would be sufficient whenever it's released.

Otherwise, to be best of my knowledge, the short hash should be safe to use.

As to whether there's a better way, it is possible to use 'git checkout <hash>' to jump to a particular commit in the extant cloned git repo. I prefer to use the long hash when doing this, but the short hash has worked whenever I've been pressed for time. You can branch this to a specific name with 'git checkout -b <newbranchname> <hash>', which makes it more resilient for general managing. And yes, this will result in the versions of lib[avcodec|avformat|avfilter|avutil|avresample|swscal e|swresample] that were current at the time of the commit in question (whether the version numbers are high enough for a particular use is a question of whether they were at that time; it'll use the versions from that commit, not the current versions @ HEAD).

Of course, the question of if a full clone and then checking out a specific revision is preferable to grabbing a snapshot tarball from git-web is a separate issue.



As an aside, regarding x265's instructions, the YASM patch is no longer needed because YASM applied a fix to their git repo which increases it 8x more than the patch did (patch = 511, git = 4096). I've also taken to using Ninja, although I've yet to do any conclusive speed tests - that change seemed to make it fly in comparison to make -j4 on the OSX machine I have access to, though. Ninja is supposed to use multiple cores more efficiently than plain old Make does, as well as being better about inter-dependent source files (again, supposedly). I'd always wondered what it was whenever I saw it listed in CMake's Generator list, but it took a couple years before I actually looked into it more closely. Seems it was initially written for Chrom[e|ium] to use. An example of usage with x265:

sudo apt-get install ninja-build
cd x265/source
cmake -G "Ninja" <other options>
ninja
sudo ninja install

(as with other alternate install systems, you can use it with checkinstall by appending 'ninja install' to the end of the checkinstall command)

[umithaz]

Thanks for the guide guys.

[andrew.46]

FFmpeg 2.2 shouldn't be too far off, judging from the mailing list.

http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.gi...364fc0c055f05a

[andrew103]

after trying with yasm , managed to fix the issue. great tip...thanks

[andrew.46]

Latest x265 and FFmpeg seem at the very least usable, a sample here:

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/18528ddd

The encoder likes a fast cpu for sure

[mc4man]

Latest x265 and FFmpeg seem at the very least usable, a sample here:

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/18528ddd

The encoder likes a fast cpu for sure

Actually looks pretty good for the bitrate, at least at default size.
Was getting some h tearing in players other than mplayer though have fixed that.
(was that from the dvd source?

[andrew.46]

(was that from the dvd source?

Bluray

[FakeOutdoorsman]

The FFmpeg releases (and occassional usage tip) are also announced on Twitter (but instead of using releases, general users are still recommended to use the most recent ffmpeg they can from git master via compiling or downloading a recent build).

[andrew.46]

I have compiled my copy of FFmpeg against libsoxr and started using it for re-sampling. Is anybody else using this, any comments about its usage?