[FFmpeg-user] FFmpeg problem in Mac

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Reindl Harald <h.reindl <at> thelounge.net> writes:

> ah in the snapshot are for sure no bugs at all?

less bugs != no bugs
(Sorry if I really ever wrote about "no bugs".)

In case I forgot:
Help with the release process would of course 
be very welcome, as explained, all releases 
(including the forked ones except maybe ffmbc) 
are just arbitrary snapshots, if you have 
suggestions how to improve them and want to 
help, please do so!

Trying to explain the development process better:
Even related projects (like for example vlc), 
have true development branches as opposed to 
release branches, development on those branches 
often goes on for months (or even years) and 
bugs (including severe regressions) are 
expected (and not immediately but some time 
later - before the actual release - fixed).
For many years, such big changes simply did 
not happen in FFmpeg, new formats were added, 
bugs were fixed and new features added. While 
all these actions sometimes of course did cause 
regressions, this was unusual (mostly due to an 
extremely rigorous review process).
At the same time, releases were badly maintained 
and especially the 0.6 series is known to contain 
a very large number of bugs that were never fixed, 
certainly including security relevant bugs, 
possibly including exploitable ones.
As you may know, the process has changed, reviews 
are less rigorous nowadays but this fact alone 
does not make releases more "stable" (whatever 
that means in practice) - perhaps the contrary...

While it is true that immediately after the 
release of 1.2, a very large change in the core 
of FFmpeg was committed that definitely caused 
some trouble, I don't see what exactly that 
changed about the above: Many features were 
committed since, many bugs were fixed since 
(both related to TEP - the name of the large 
change - and unrelated), so knowing the 
situation quite well, I consider it very 
unlikely that there are more (known plus 
unknown) regressions in git head than 
known bugs in releases that are fixed in 
git head.

Finally, all that being said, I strongly believe 
(and there are strong indications) that the 
current release(s) are the best FFmpeg 
(including its forks) has ever provided so for 
distributors the situation is certainly better 
than ever, but for users, I don't see any 
advantage at all in using releases.
(Apart from getting no support in practice, also 
something not different from the forks, or 
does Baptiste support old ffmbc releases?)

Please note that this thread is about a problem 
with ffmpeg (the application), not an installed 
shared library - sorry if you do not find it 
obvious that I would never suggest to blindly 
install newer shared libraries system-wide, no 
matter if libavcodec or any other library.
Concerning ffmpeg, I suggest to never install 
(I never do), it works fine without 
installation and you do not have to worry 
about your system but at the same time, it 
shouldn't hurt to install it.

Carl Eugen