ffmpeg sucks

Guess what happens when someone complains to ffmpeg developers that their software management and API suck. Well, he gets answered repeatedly to include a CVS snapshot of ffmpeg and link statically against it, "like everyone does". Splendid.

2007-07-18 07:43:03+0900

miscellaneous, p.d.o

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6 Responses to “ffmpeg sucks”

  1. Paul Collins Says:

    Sounds about right. If you check mplayer out of SVN it sucks ffmpeg and a bunch of other crap into the tree with svn:external. So glad it’s in Debian these days!

  2. Gasper Zejn Says:

    Very simple!

    One needs to buy a neat sounding domain (eg. ffmpegsucks.org) and set up CVS snapshots with predictable release times.

  3. Michael Scherer Says:

    I am quite surprised to see no one brought the argument of “nightmare to port security and bugfixes on stable release” on the list.

    Especially with regard of potential security hole found by fuzzing, see http://sam.zoy.org/zzuf/.

    Each time a single problem is found, at least 10 packages must be updated by distribution, tested, and reviewed, while using a shared library reduce this to 1. Not to mention you need to know what project use a internal copy of the library, so basically, you need to use grep or something like that for ffmpeg library.

    Really, the day I will need to start a multimedia project, I will use gstreamer ( or anything else ), not ffmpeg. And I also would recommend to other to do so.

  4. Tyln Sylverwind Says:

    1. Write a library.
    2. Call if “ffmlib”.
    3. Statically link it against the latest version of ffmpeg.
    4. Port other software to the same library.
    5. Send patches to the upstream maintainers.
    .
    .
    .
    41. The ffmpeg developers complain.
    42. Tell them to -suck it- +freeze their API every once in a while to encourage developers and package maintainers to use it+.
    .
    0. Wish that glandium (dot) org had a preview button for comments.

  5. toots Says:

    @Tyln Sylverwind: Isn’t this the aim of gstreamer for instance ?

  6. Justin Says:

    That link to the ffmpeg-devel archives is 2 years old. Not that the problem has gotten any better, but there have at least been some good discussions on the topic since then. Inevitably they all lead to the same end though. The typical response from FFmpeg developers (and I am one of them) to making official releases is “we really don’t have the time. do you have the time? do you want to do it?”. So as long as nobody volunteers, it won’t get done. It’s not that most of us wouldn’t like to see nice, clean, stable releases, it’s that it is a *volunteer* project with nobody currently willing to give the time and effort to take on the task of release management. Gasper suggested that someone set up a site for unofficial releases. Well it’s easier than that; just volunteer to create and maintain official ones.