[MPlayer-dev-eng] [RFC] including x264 with MPlayer tarballs

[Jindrich Makovicka]

Guillaume POIRIER wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to propose including x264 with MPlayer tarballs, the same way
> that libavcodec is included now (not exactly like others such as
> libmpeg2, libfaad2, liba52, tremor which are more like forks of the
> original projects).
> 
> x264 is probably the only practical open-source way to encode video in
> H264, and it works very well, but it is perhaps not as well known or
> widely used as it should be, probably because of the lack of numbered
> releases and the lack of packages for most linux distros.
> 
> There are several reasons to include it with MPlayer and build it by default:
> 
> - having x264 available in mencoder is important because it is among
> the highest-quality codecs for a given bitrate, and also because it is
> an important new standard which is only going to become more important
> as HD becomes more widespread
> - x264 is (almost) only useful in combination with mplayer on unix (or
> in combination with other software, but not really as a standalone
> encoder - it is basically just a codec library, the commandline
> frontend is useful for testing only)
> - there are no x264 in any major linux distro
> - there are no x264 numbered releases (or even tarballs), the only way
> to obtain it is with subversion (which is itself not that common)
> - because of that, most mplayer/mencoder users are unlikely to end up
> with a version of mencoder that has x264
> 
> Including x264 should not be create any problems, because it already
> builds as a static library, and its API has been relatively stable for
> some time now.  One of the x264 developers has volunteered to help
> with any work that needs to be done to make this happen.

I have x264 CVS compilation inside mencoder integrated in my build
script for about half a year (together with Theora & FAAC). I can send a
patch if you like.

-- 
Jindrich Makovicka