Earlier this year, I said I would take a look at transcode (we removed it because it doesn't build with current ffmpeg) and perhaps write a hint. Unfortunately, the more I look at it, the less I like it!
I have no idea how to get it to build against current ffmpeg, and it looks as if nobody else does either. So, I've been experimenting with building it against ffmpeg-011.2, 0.10.6, 0.8.12, 0.7.13 (these versions are all still maintained). I put old ffmpeg and transcode in /opt/transcode, and fix up the transcode progs with a wrapper in /usr/bin, e.g. for transcode itself: export PATH=/opt/transcode/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin /opt/transcode/bin/transcode $* The PATH is exported so that any programs called by the transcode binary, in particular ffmpeg, will be the intended version. I suspect that _some_ of the problem is changes in the "stable" versions of ffmpeg. e.g. the 'medium' preset is no longer installed, which leads to a segfault - debian's 04_ffmpeg_options.patch for transcode appears to fix this specific error, the patch in gentoo did not fix it for me. The following work: 1. tccat, to get a .vob file. 2. transcode -i filename.vob -y xvid,tcaud -o filename.mp4 although this reports that it cannot open ./xvid4.cfg : yes, it really is looking in $PWD for that, which is one reason I'm not inclined to waste more of my time on transcode. 3. transcode -i filename.vob -o filename.wav -y null,wav All attempts to use (old) ffmpeg from transcode fail - either reporting that the codec is unknown (although the ffmpeg configure output shows them as available for encoding), or starting to run, and then segfaulting after doing the processing, leaving an unusable output file. I also discovered that the configure options are "interesting": I had --enable-x264, and configure thought that was ok, but it didn't create export_x264.so. The configure output correctly shows that theora is only available as an _input_ option (experimental), so overall the package is not as useful as appears. In any case, for converting video, once you have the .vob file, it seems easier to use (current) ffmpeg on the command line, and specify all the parameters. It looks as if I'll need to keep installing it to get 'tccat' for ripping my DVDs, but beyond that I think it is more trouble than it's worth. ĸen -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
