Re: [LAU] state of multimedia - Linux-audio-user

6 May 2009

On Thu May  7  6:36 , Patrick Shirkey  sent:

...

James Cameron wrote:
  On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 06:04:31PM +0700, Patrick
Shirkey wrote:

  I'm looking at blender again and it appears
that the reason it won't  
 load a movie for me is because the Fedora 10 version was compiled  
 without ffmpeg support.

 WTF? 

 Certain libraries trigger license or patent issues in some countries,
 and so Fedora won't package them.  As a result, they must compile
 Blender without a critical feature.

  mplayer without jack support and blender without
ffmpeg support.

 I hope they fixed both in Fedora 11.

 Don't bet on it.

   Do all the distros have this policy?

 No.  Several distributions have a more relaxed policy.  Hunt around.

 Some distribution communities also provide a secondary repository for
 restricted formats or libraries.

The annoying thing is I already have ffmpeg package installed and I 
assumed that if I have that package then I should also get a version of 
blender compiled to use it. What's the point of making a non ffmpeg 
blender that has priority over a compatible version if the ffmpeg 
packages are already installed?

Jack is included in fedora core IIUC so I have no idea why anyone would 
compile mplayer without jack support.

To me it just highlights the state of multimedia support in Fedora and 
possibly other OS's where there is still a level of disconnect that IMO 
has been overcome in the LAD community and is shown by the people who 
package the audio apps.

This also highlights the advantage of source based and more customisable distros
such as Gentoo or Arch.. where you can set these options yourself. Sure a little
more work, but you get what you want. 

Of course also the jacklab, ubuntustudio, and 64studio distros... 