[Nix-dev] ffmpeg defaults

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 09:28:29PM +0100, Mathijs Kwik wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 9:05 PM, Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl> wrote:
> > In order to prevent dependency bloat we really shouldn't enable every external
> > codec supported by ffmpeg, especially when it has builtin support...  I think
> > I've done xvid encoding with ffmpeg/mencoder (though I did add ‘ffmpeg =
> > pkgs.ffmpeg.override { faacSupport = true; };’ to my packageOverrides to get AAC
> > support).
> 
> The problem with overrides on packages like ffmpeg is that you will
> have to build a lot from source from that moment on, as quite a lot of
> packages depend on it.
> I agree about keeping dependency trees slim by default, but it would
> be great if there's an easy way to have 2 versions/flavours of a
> package like ffmpeg, both built by the buildfarm.
> A normal slim one, and a full blown max-functionality one. But I
> understand this would mean building 2 versions of all dependent
> packages as well, and exponentially more if a package depends on more
> of those "flavourable" packages.

I don't know how to do xvid encoding with ffmpeg without libxvid, or how to do
vorbis encoding without libvorbis.

Nevertheless, I don't think we are making this very bloated, for libvorbis (that
takes in libogg) and libxvid in ffmpeg. But if we diverge, we could have one
flavour in nixpkgs more focused to decoding, and another focused to encoding,
used by packages like kdenlive for example.

And also, any expert here on video and audio, to know the difference between
ffmpeg decocders and those libvorbis and libxvid? Speed? Quality?

Regards,
Lluís.