[FFmpeg-devel] Change separator for -x264opts or document a workaround

[Ivan Pozdeev]

The question is: how likely is the change to be accepted?

The problem is: `deblock' libx264 option uses ':' as its own separator.
The problem already surfaced @ffmpeg lists a few times:
http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-user/2011-June/001491.html
http://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel-irc/2012-February/000490.html


Currenlty, libx264's `deblock' accepts ',' as a separator too.
I was able to track it back to this commit:
http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=commit;f=x264.c;h=476a0f93c9aa42a39c3518f891e024ef41b1056e
which reads "allow ',' separator for --filter"
with no explanations of the reason.

Despite this, they keep this feature undocumented for some reason:
http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=blob;f=x264.c;h=833cf0ed84f290c40dd8faadb3a2568341bc0e61;hb=HEAD#l594
(neither x264-devel@ nor the docs of that time say anything).

It's clearly not a workaround for -x264opts since it was committed in
2006 and the ffmpeg option in 2011 (commit id 1f9621d39b80add240d09daf1328ceae613bcd4).

Maybe we should document this ourselves (and risk becoming incorrect
if they change this someday; averted if mentioned with "as of <epoch>")?

As for the new separator, I suggest space, it isn't used by any of
libx264's options except probably a file name
(see http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings ,
 I checked the code, too).

Btw, MediaInfo separates libx264 options with " / " in its file
information window.

-- 
Best regards,
 Ivan                          mailto:vano at mail.mipt.ru