Optional Codecs missing: x264, faac, faad2, lame

[Richard Spindler]

Libquicktime supports a lot of different audio and video codecs, which can be enabled optionally at compile time, depending on the availablility of certain dependencies.

Some of those Audio/Video codecs are missing, even though they are available in the Ubuntu Gutsy Repositories.

Those missing codecs are: x264, faac, faad2, lame

If the following packages were present during compile time libquicktime would enable those codecs:

libx264-dev
libfaac-dev
libfaad2-dev
liblame-dev

The libquicktime DEBIAN package does not specify them, because the above packages are not available in debian. They are available in ubuntu though, therefore the should be added to libquicktime as build-dependencies.

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

There's another rule: the distro is divided in components such as main, universe, multiverse, and restricted (and commercial). Packages in main must build against main and main only; packages in universe may build against universe and main.

Until feisty, libquicktime was in main while the packages you mention (x264 etc.) were not, so it wasn't possible to build the main libquicktime source package against them; now the situation is different in that libquicktime is in universe, but x264, faac, and faad2 are in multiverse.

What could be done is having a second libquicktime package, for example libquicktime-multiverse which would be a copy built against the packages from multiverse.

[Richard Spindler (richard-spindler)]

Hi,

libquicktime is modular, it would be possible to just have the libquicktime modules for x264, faac, and faad2 in multiverse, similar like how its done with gstreamer-[good|bad|ugly].

What do you think?

Cheers
-Richard

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

The components division is at the source level; for example the buildd machines are pulling build-dependencies only from allowed components when building source packages. It's possible to demote binary packages (such as module packages) to sub components, but not to build against sub components. IOW, to allow libquicktime to build against packages in multiverse, it must be in multiverse (or a copy of libquicktime, for example libquicktime-multiverse).

[Richard Spindler (richard-spindler)]

I see, I was thinking about binary packages.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

[cf. unstable/intrepid changes to ffmpeg for dlopen()]