[FFmpeg-user] FFmpeg problem in Mac

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Vladimir Espinosa Angarica writes:

> I'm running Mac OS X 10.8.3 and installed the latest 
> version of FFmpeg 1.2.1

This is not the latest version (it is actually starting 
to get old).

> I'm having problems generating a video from a group of 
> PNG images. The video is generated, apparently without 
> functioning complaints (please see the log attached) 
> but nothing is shown when you try to open the video,
> exactly the video viewer is able to open it, and play 
> it, but only a black window is shown.

Which player did you test?
Is the player maybe broken and cannot show anything else 
than yuv420p? I use MPlayer and I usually suggest vlc.

> But probably the bigger oddity is that, three months ago,
> probably with a previous version of FFmpeg, I was able 
> to create the video without problems.

Yes, such a bug was fixed, in older versions, pix_fmt 
choice was a little random.

Short answer:
User -pix_fmt yuv420p

Long answer:
Since you did not specify a pixel format, ffmpeg has to 
choose one. Your input is rgb (which is not supported by 
the encoder), to loose as little quality as possible, it 
chooses yuv444p.
The video players installed on your system are very old-
fashioned and do not support decoding yuv444p in h264.

Carl Eugen

PS: Thank you for the sample!
There may be a bug in ffplay which also fails here to 
decode the sample you uploaded (ffmpeg, MPlayer and vlc
all work fine).