Bug#567863: RFP: Handbrake - video transcoder

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Mo, Okt 10, 2011 at 07:12:23 (CEST), Rogério Brito wrote:

> Hi there.
>
> I'm just including the Multimedia team, as they don't seem to be subscribed
> to this bug.
>
>
> On Oct 09 2011, Ralf Jung wrote:
>> > Can't be packaged as x264 video codec and aac and mp3 audio codec aren't
>> > free.
>> How can that be, I can decode and encode mp3 and view MPEG4 videos without 
>> problems, installing only packages from the debian repositories...?
>
> Ralf, I think that when Christian wrote that, we didn't have x264 and lame
> in the main archive. Things have changed since this bug was originally
> filed.
>
> Once we have faac (if it's acceptable for our archive), then it would be
> lovely to have a new version of handbrake (e.g., from their git tree) in the
> archive, as it is a frontend for multimedia libraries that quite possibly
> passes the "useable by mom and dad" usability test, especially since it
> comes with sensible presets.

I don't think we'll ever have faac in Debian because of its license. See
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/faac/+bug/374900 for
details.

Luckily, we have vo-aacenc
(http://packages.debian.org/sid/main/libvo-aacenc0), which is the aac
encoder from android and can encode aac just fine.


>> As far as I know, Handbrake does not even implement any of this. It uses
>> gstreamer, ffmpeg and others.
>
> Well, it does implement some things, like, for instance, their decombing
> routines, which is very nice for some interlaced and almost-interlaced
> things.
>
> As a side-effect, this decombing of theirs results in variable frame rates,
> which potentially feeds fewer frames to x264 (or whatever encoder is in
> question), making the bitrates tend to lower.
>
> Another side-effect that people may not appreciate because they run fast
> architectures is that outputting fewer frames, some slower video cards
> (e.g., in a powerpc machine) can have a fighting chance of playing some
> videos.
>
> I don't know of any implementation of handbrake's decombing algorithm in
> other software (e.g., ffmpeg/libav, mplayer, mplayer2, gstreamer etc.) Does
> anyone know?
>
> The other transcoders (arista, transmaggedon) are jokes regarding the amount
> of configurability that they allow.

I agree that Handbrake is a really great tool. Actually, I did take a
look at the sources and found out, that it would require a lot of efford
to get it into debian. The reason is that the ship a lot of patched
libraries that we already have in debian. I don't think this code
duplication is acceptable for the Debian system.

As for this RFP, I think any potential packager should identify the
included libraries and start upstreaming the included patches. Then, try
to build them against the libraries that Debian already ships.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4