[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] the future of libamr

[Baptiste Coudurier]

On 6/8/2009 1:18 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 01:03:16PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
>> On 6/8/2009 12:37 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 12:02:00PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
>>>> On 6/8/2009 3:28 AM, Ramiro Polla wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 7:07 AM, Benoit Fouet<benoit.fouet at free.fr> wrote:
>>>>>> On 05/20/2009 11:55 AM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:01:48AM +0200, Benoit Fouet wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 05/19/2009 07:38 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Now that OpenCORE AMR support is just around the corner, what about
>>>>>>>>> libamr?  I'm in favor of removing support for it.  It's nonfree and it's
>>>>>>>>> crap and we have a free replacement.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> There is a catch: libamr supports AMR-WB encoding, OpenCORE does not.
>>>>>>>>> IMO we can disregard this.  Hopefully it will spur the development of a
>>>>>>>>> native replacement.  I do not plan to remove libamr support from the 0.5
>>>>>>>>> branch, so it will always be available there.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> or we can only keep the support of the WB encoder, depending on non-free
>>>>>>>> flag ?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You don't think keeping it in the 0.5 branch will be enough?
>>>>>> it might be... I may be speaking for people who do not exist anyway
>>>>>> (users of AMR-WB encoding feature)
>>>>> In my win32 builds[0] I don't include libamr. The only people that
>>>>> bother to contact me asking specifically for amr encoding are
>>>>> commercial. If they spent their effort on an open source encoder that
>>>>> would be much better. So, I'm for this removal...
>>>> Or they can stop using FFmpeg.
>>> Your point being?
>> My point being that we lost one user, which we could have easily kept.
> 
> Sorry, but this is nonsense.  There is absolutely no indication that
> they stopped using FFmpeg because AMR support was not available.  And
> what else would they use?  There is no alternative that comes even close
> to FFmpeg's feature set.

Quicktime is one, they could buy another one (there are more), they
could license 3gp's encoder's

yes FFmpeg is powerful and has many great features, but there are
definetely solutions around that offer the same features.

> Also, the primary goal of this project is not to get as many users as
> possible at any cost.  Otherwise we would have included a DLL loader a
> long time ago.

That may be your opinion, other people might have another one.
IMHO FFmpeg should have as many users as it can reasonably get.

Native implementations have always been prefered and it is justified and
I agree with it. Once AMR-WB encoding support will begin and will work
in some ways, you will be very welcome to remove the wrapper.

Remember that AMB-WB encoding was added for a reason.

-- 
Baptiste COUDURIER                              GnuPG Key Id: 0x5C1ABAAA
Key fingerprint                 8D77134D20CC9220201FC5DB0AC9325C5C1ABAAA
FFmpeg maintainer                                  http://www.ffmpeg.org