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

[Guillaume POIRIER]

Hi,

On 8/22/05, Jindrich Makovicka <makovick at kmlinux.fjfi.cvut.cz> wrote:
> 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.

Sure, I'd love that!

Guillaume
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