libav vs ffmpeg

Lustmored · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 206 Location: Poland

Seeing recent news about ffmpeg and libav I'm a bit confused. Does it mean libav is the future of ffmpeg or is it just a fork, that develops new features, that are to be merged into ffmpeg?

Could somebody please clarify the situation, to enable making conscious choice between ffmpeg and libav?

As far as I see, some people tried to take over ffmpeg, but they've failed and they're work is merged into ffmpeg, but there still is project libav lying around. I'm really confused :roll:

audiodef · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:03 pm Post subject:

Can you be more specific? The only match to "libav" I see in Portage is "libavc1394", which is very different from ffmpeg.
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ppurka · Advocate Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 3256

OP is probably referring to this: http://lwn.net/Articles/433347/
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aCOSwt · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:52 pm Post subject: Re: libav vs ffmpeg

Gusar · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 8:37 pm Post subject:

libav is a fork. Some people first tried to take over ffmpeg. This didn't work, so they forked.

As to choosing between them... Well, since yesterday ffmpeg has multi-threaded decoding. It also has more video filters.

Lustmored · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 206 Location: Poland

But the first commit of virtual/ffmpeg had libav as the preferred one. That's mostly confusing part of it. Choosing a new fork as preferred than old good ffmpeg?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

libav is run by a thoroughly nasty, litigation-happy group of thugs, and I wouldn't trust their software as far as I could throw it personally.

You're free to take your own risks of course.

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

I believe it is technically a fork.

tomk · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:35 pm Post subject: Re: libav vs ffmpeg

pol01 · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Posts: 13

Libav and ffmeg are not install simultaneously.
Do I need manually mask one of them?

Lustmored · Apprentice Joined: 28 May 2010 Posts: 206 Location: Poland

No, when you install one of them the second will be automatically blocked.

But I have another question - are dependencies prepared for virtual/ffmpeg?

pol01 · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Posts: 13

gcasillo · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:05 pm Post subject:

pol01 · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2007 Posts: 13

gcasillo · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:57 pm Post subject:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9263

emerging either ffmpeg or libav, whichever you prefer, would have done it, without messing around with package.mask. USE-flags must correlate between virtual and ffmpeg/libav.

Afaik packages depending on media-video/ffmpeg are not yet ready for the move to virtual/ffmpeg and libav, I had to manually move some ebuilds into a local overlay, editing DEPENDS to the virtual.

darkphader · Veteran Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 1225 Location: Motown

papu · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:03 am Post subject:

in my case and system , only chromium depends on media-video/ffmpeg , it don't detect virtual/ffmpeg, at this time, and make conflict wiht media-video/libva and ffmpeg, then what it's better option to use?

jbouzan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 138

You can wait for the chromium maintainer to make the dependency on virtual/ffmpeg instead of media-video/ffmpeg, or copy the ebuild to a local overlay (with a revision number bump) and modify that line in the dependencies yourself.

askoff · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 77

And which one of these contains the ffmpeg-mt patch/feature?

EDIT: I see. So it's the original ffmpeg package.

lxg · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:49 pm Post subject:

keba · Guru Joined: 02 Jun 2006 Posts: 328 Location: Switzerland

I've been reading into this, and now I'm not sure which one (Ffmpeg or Libav) I'd better install. So I'm wondering, as objectively as possible, which one is better for the future. :

1) Which one has more (main) developers? (More main developers => faster development)

2) Is there any difference between the two as of now? What are plans for the future of both projects? (They only say something about more improvement on their web pages...)

3) Is Libav fully compatible to ffmpeg, I mean can ffmpeg be fully replaced yet or not (that is if I choose to replace it)?

4) Which one do you recommend?

That should help to choose... Thanks in advance
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forrestfunk81 · Guru Joined: 07 Feb 2006 Posts: 567 Location: münchen.de

FYI Scarabeus bloged about this:

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

this is the worst thing i've saw, an howto be like oracle while been opensource...
pretty lame and they should be ashame.
if i understood the story (always hard to really catch all, i'm sure even them aren't sure of everything), some of them were disagreeing the dictator guy was reviewing the code and mostly reject it because "not as good as he could do it", ending with others devs loosing faith.
And because they think they could own the name, they fork and try to grab ffmpeg name and structure (as they were admin the servers), all that just to remove the commiter/reviewer !
Pretty lame, could understand why they do it, coudln't get why they do it like that! Just to remove this guy, was he so dictator that noone could remove him ?
Could understand also why they wish grab the project name, because all users knew that name, while libav will start from 0 on popularity, but it's like they cheat us, without letting us choose. A bit insulting: don't let user choose, they're too dumb, let's just keep the name they will follow like sheeps.

Now if the dictator don't change his habit we should have
- ffmpeg = slow evolution+more speed/stability because of strict coding politic the guy use
- libav = fast evolution, less stability as they (still if i understood clear) wish more functions to be push even not well review/test (still the code will be stabilize and optimize, but later)

On paper, libav should gave better results if they don't put anarchy and build 2 branch unstable/stable

I should go with libav, i will just wait to see if they really could handle it, big project always need a main man (or men) to drive everyone to the right path. I just hope they get away with some guys that could do that instead of just coding.