[mythtv-users] FFmpeg releases version 0.5

[Robert McNamara]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 2:57 PM, gonzalo diethelm <gdiethelm at dcv.cl> wrote:

> Straight, honest to God question: why is it necessary to import the
> code? Would it be possible to use FFmpeg as an external library?
>

Not that thorny-- a couple of reasons as I understand them.  Firstly,
Myth has a fair number of local modifications for the libav* source,
particularly the Transport Stream and Program Stream demuxers, which
makes the upstream versions unsuitable without some hand massaging.
Secondly, importing the source at compile time is very very tricky--
ask mplayer devs, who are *constantly* fixing compilation of their
player because of their decision to do so.  The ffmpeg code changes a
*lot*, including the API, and it would be a lot more work than the
relatively small group of core devs could easily manage.

Myth as a project is maybe 10ish core devs and 20-30 regular
contributors-- just keeping a dynamically imported version of libav*
working adds up fast in manpower and developer frustration.

Robert