[MPlayer-users] best combination of mplayer,ffmpeg,x264

[Heinz Wiesinger]

Raimund Berger wrote:
> Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski <dominik at rangers.eu.org> writes:
> > On Monday, 09 June 2008 at 11:11, Heinz Wiesinger wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >>
> >> I'm a contributor to SlackBuilds.org, which is a repository of
> >> build-scripts for making Slackware-packages.
> >> We are currently discussing for the most appropriate moment to update
> >> ffmpeg and x264. We rely on the releases of mplayer and I think, there
> >> might be problems if we just update ffmpeg/x264 and leave mplayer
> >> behind. So I was thinking of updating ffmpeg and x264 everytime a new
> >> mplayer version gets released.
> >> However, I'm not quite sure my assumption that there would be problems
> >> when using an older mplayer with recent x264/ffmpeg snapshots is
> >> correct. As you know probably more about such situations than me I
> >> thought of asking for your opinion on this.
> >
> > All three should usually be updated at the same time to snapshots from
> > the same day. See the recent compilation problems due to FFmpeg requiring
> > the current x264 snapshot for example.
>
> Also note that mplayer has it's own, statically linked in copy of
> ffmpeg in it's own source tree. So if you rely on mplayers ffmpeg
> features (libavcodec etc), you need to update mplayer as well if you
> want recently implemented ffmpeg stuff with mplayer.
>
> Waiting for official releases makes little sense of course, as there
> are none. Likely the safest way to go in that regard is use your
> distribution packages, and then maybe upgrade to your distribution's
> beta/testing version for recent stuff. This ensures the stuff at least
> goes through some testing, including your distribution's user base.

There are no distirbution packages for Slackware. There are some third party 
packages, but I don't consider them that well tested. Actually, you could 
call the scripts we provide as Slackware's "most-official" packages. 
Basically, we are exactly that stage your are describing we should rely on.

> If that's not enough, the given advice applies I'd say. Update all
> three from svn/git simultaneously. But things could break at any time
> in nonobvious ways, as patches apparently flow just in without further
> testing. Quite natural for development trees, of course. So if you go
> that way, be sure to test your versions for the stuff you want to do
> before embarking on week long batch encodings just to find out
> afterwards that things got messed up.

Thanks for your answers so far. Almost all of my questions were answered :) 
However, one thing I would still like to know is if it breaks mplayer, if I 
just upgrade x264 (ffmpeg wouldn't count in that context I guess) and do a 
recompilation of my old mplayer version.

Grs,
Heinz
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