[FFmpeg-devel] GSoC with FFMpeg waht a combination!

[Robert Swain]

On 21/03/2008, Nico Sabbi <Nicola.Sabbi at poste.it> wrote:
> On Friday 21 March 2008 15:39:30 Jason (spot) Brower wrote:
>  > Last night while thinking over what I could do I came up with this
>  > brain dump. cat brain | grep 'idea GSOC FFMPEG' > FFMPEG maillist
>  > -------------------------------------------
>  > Recipe Based Video Converter
>  > Concept:
>  > With so many different formats of audio and video, it has become
>  > dificult to convert content to your prefered formats without having
>  > to learn a complicated command line operation that doesn't always
>  > meet your expectations.  Additionally, if your trying to convert a
>  > 30 second clip and it takes you 5 minutes to read examples and the
>  > manual, you know you need something that can just get the job done.
>
> learning something new doesn't hurt, really.

Indeed, though the documentation is lacking in many places. Also, I
think major improvements to the ease-of-use of FFmpeg for
encoding/transcoding purposes would come through per codec defaults
and speed/quality tradeoff presets. I believe the most benefit will
come from these if they were implemented in the libraries.

>  > I propose a video conversion gui that will convert video/audio
>  > formats using a "recipe based system" of conversion.  This program
>  > will help users choose the best formats, quality and rates by
>  > asking specific questions that help the users come up with a
>  > solution the fits there needs.  An example use case could be the
>  > following:
>
> avidemux already does it, and it uses libav*

I haven't really looked at it before but I downloaded the OS X GTK
Quartz and QT4 versions to try. The UI features are good but it has
some bugs. The 'Auto' menu wasn't immediately obvious and only
functions when a file is open. Even with a file open, selecting one of
the presets and OKing it didn't seem to do anything. I was expecting
it to either begin encoding or more likely to change the selected
codecs, output file format and related settings. Maybe these are just
bugs in the OS X versions.

I don't know who originally wrote the following (was it Ben?) but, the
task suggestion alludes to significant work in the libs and not
focusing on the GUI:

"Build a gui for the libs of FFmpeg. The main objective in this task
is to extend the codecs and formats to support querying of features
and good defaults. The actual GUI should just be a simple skeleton
with support for encoding of multiple files. Most of the work will be
done in the libs."

I would appreciate some elaboration on the kinds of features the
author of this idea had in mind. Is it supposed to suggest a stream
analysis tool that can also do batch conversions? That's what it
sounds like. Regardless, the task would be better specified if it had
a list of feature ideas that would be implemented in the libs. I think
defaults/presets would be one idea, unless it gets put down as a
qualification task.

Rob