[FFmpeg-devel] ffmpeg logging on stderr

[Måns Rullgård]

Stefano Sabatini <stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> writes:

> On date Thursday 2011-03-10 00:52:09 +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd encoded:
>> Stefano Sabatini <stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> writes:
>> 
>> > On date Wednesday 2011-03-09 16:20:17 -0800, tech gro encoded:
>> >> Thanks Stefano, That helped a bunch :)
>> >> 
>> >> Is there also a way to turn off the info that comes up right after firing
>> >> ffmpeg, eg:
>> >> 
>> >> Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
>> >> built on ......
>> >> libavcodec    52.72. 2 / 52.72. 2
>> >> libavformat   52.64. 2 / 52.64. 2
>> >> libavdevice   52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
>> >
>> > No way, you need to parse and/or strip the header.
>> 
>> There really should be a way.  I find that header most annoying.
>
> The "version" header is shown before the parsing of the commandline is
> done.
>
> We could print it just before the transcode() function (or the ff*
> corresponding function) is called, but since the parsing is done
> before you could have the app printing an error and exit, in this case
> you don't have the version message in the error log (which is annoying
> in case you are reading a bug-report).
>
> Possible solutions:
> * implement pre-parsing of the commandline (overkill?)
> * remove the version header, and ask the users to always report ff*
>   -version when reporting bugs / asking for help (and you can bet that
>   they mostly won't)

We should at least make it go away with -v 0 (or maybe -1).  The amount
of console spam spewed forth by ffmpeg these days isn't even funny.  All
the useless metadata dumps didn't make it better.  In 99% of cases I
don't care whatsoever about what muxer some file claims to have been
created with etc.  If I need to know that specific bit of information, I
know how to find it.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mans at mansr.com