Comments on: binary codecs

By: Toralf Förster

Toralf Förster — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:07:34 +0000

>They see "win32" and think, "Oh, I want to be able to playback WMA and WMV and DivX so I must need these, right?" Most users probably don't think anything b/c the win32 is a default use flag for x86 desktops, isn't it ?

By: AS Pushkin

AS Pushkin — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:47:17 +0000

This is an issue I've run into over the last 10 months or so. I use to be able to view dvd movies, but due to conflicting codecs, I think, any movie simply stops part way into it. I note that mplayer's log says the cracking of the key is the problem.

By: Alexander Huemer

Alexander Huemer — Sat, 30 May 2009 18:26:21 +0000

i never really got the details about the current state of the codecs packages.
on my amd64 machine i experience the following:
the win32codecs useflag of mplayer is masked for my arch, the package itself is not, it's ~.
media-libs/amd64codecs is masked.
so, win32codecs is "more" available than amd64codecs on amd64, but also win32codecs cannot be pulled in by mplayer.
a little bit strange, isn't it?
so, on amd64, how do i get binary codecs? e.g. for watching an indeo video.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:34:55 +0000

er, wow, I was off ... there's more than that. x86, amd64, ppc, alpha, osx x86 & ppc.

And nobody calls them win32codecs except for us. They just package them as essential-arch.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:33:10 +0000

What do you mean about Xine and Real? They're both in there.

Upstream actually already has three packs, one for x86, one for ppc and one for amd64.

By: Mike Lothian

Mike Lothian — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:44:15 +0000

Excellent idea

But please add lots of einfo explaining it

I always thought the codecs were additional ones that weren't part of ffmpeg

Mike

By: arseny

arseny — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:59:52 +0000

Yeah, you're very right there.
What do you think of adding some short description of cases where user really need to install these codecs and where he doesn't somewhere to the fore? E.g. ebuild can be masked by default, or message can be shown after installation.

By: Trizt

Trizt — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:59:22 +0000

I don't mind if those three packages are merged together to a mega package. I do agree that people usually won't need these, but I have encountered some media files which I have had to reencode in a 32bit environment before I can play in my 64bit environment.

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:56:19 +0000

I just looked and I have win32codecs installed. I looked into removing it but got the following:

$ emerge --pretend --depclean win32codecs

Calculating dependencies... done!
media-libs/win32codecs-20071007-r2 pulled in by:
media-video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p28450
media-video/vlc-0.9.8a

>>> No packages selected for removal by depclean

$ equery depends win32codecs
[ Searching for packages depending on win32codecs... ]
media-video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p28450 (!bindist & x86 & real? media-libs/win32codecs)
(!bindist&x86&win32codecs? media-libs/win32codecs)
media-video/vlc-0.9.8a (win32codecs? media-libs/win32codecs)

$ euse --active bindist x86 real win32codecs
x86 [+ ]
win32codecs [+ D ]

$ eselect profile show
Current make.profile symlink:
default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop

Somewhere the win32codecs flag is enabled by default, but I can't find where. Any ideas?

By: Diego E. "Flameeyes" Pettenò

Diego E. "Flameeyes" Pettenò — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:05:19 +0000

I'd suggest _against_ going toward this. First the Real binary codecs can be used in situations where the rest really cannot (64-bit xine can load 64-bit Real codecs, but not 32-bit indeo codecs!); second, win32codecs is what upstream calls most of the pack.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:50:56 +0000

That sound like a good idea if you include all the formats as USE flags. Then, users like me will actually know what's included in those packages