[OE-core] RFC: libav, ffmpeg, and OE-Core

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2013-05-30 at 20:59 +0100, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Video decoding is an important function for a lot of devices. We currently
> have gst-ffmpeg, which includes the ffmpeg sources, in OE-Core but we don't have
> ffmpeg or libav itself that is a bit more re-usable outside of GStreamer. This
> brings up a few questions:
> 
> 1) Which is the preferred option for OE; ffmpeg or its "fork" libav? libav
> seems to be better suited to use as a library but on the other hand ffmpeg
> isn't exactly dead. Some background:
> 
> http://aballier.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/ffmpeg-vs-libav-a-distribution-maintainer-point-of-view-almost-two-years-after-the-split/
> 
> http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html
> 
> 2) Following on from that, should we pull the preferred library into OE-Core
> and avoid the need for the current bbappend in meta-oe for gst-ffmpeg? (One of
> my personal motivations for sorting this out). This would of course be
> protected by LICENSE_FLAGS as we currently do with gst-ffmpeg.
> 
> Thoughts?

I think having ffmpeg in core might be a good idea since it allows us to
test various video playback and also allows us to test LICENSE_FLAGS in
the core...

Cheers,

Richard