[FFmpeg-user] Incomplete libavcodec in Ubuntu 10.04?

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Constantin Savtchenko <csavtche <at> gmail.com> writes:

>  I am attempting to compile a program which uses the avcodec and
> avutil libraries.  The program fails to compile because
> AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO is undeclared and AVPacket is not defined.  I see
> that the libraries on ffmpeg.org are complete with the necessary
> declaration and definition though.  I am unable to remove avcodec
> using my package manager because an incredibly large package (ROS) is
> reliant on it and will be removed as well.  Thus my question is two
> fold.  Is it a known problem for Ubuntu 10.04 to have
> outdated/incomplete ffmpeg libraries?

There are two unrelated problems with FFmpeg in Ubuntu:
The FFmpeg version in 10.04 is simply old (because 10.04 is old) and does not
contain (for example) the definition for AVMEDIA_TYPE_VIDEO. Adapting your
program to (also) work with FFmpeg branch oldabi possibly fixes this problem. An
alternative is to link against static libav*.

The more severe problem is that current Ubuntu contains an intentionally broken
version of FFmpeg that contains >100 bugs, missing features and security issues
not present in FFmpeg.
I believe there are repositories that contain a working version of FFmpeg.

Carl Eugen