[FFmpeg-devel] ffmpeg logging on stderr

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Thursday 2011-03-10 01:15:40 +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd encoded:
> Stefano Sabatini <stefano.sabatini-lala at poste.it> writes:
[...]
> > 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.

Yes I agree. I have some ideas, for example:

always use av_log for logging in ffmpeg / other tools, advantages:
fancy coloring, the users don't have to care about the distinction
between application and library logging (why should they?), and we
could drop -v. Currently we're mixing av_log with fprintf(stderr) with
no criteria.

Then we could preparse the -loglevel option *or* a -q option (easily
done with few lines of code, shared between all ff* tools), which
enables skipping to print the header.

What do you think?
-- 
FFmpeg = Furious Fabulous Miracolous Puritan Extroverse God