Outdated FFMPEG version impeding HD video playback

[Degenerate]

Binary package hint: libavcodec1d

The Gutsy version of libavcodec uses a code snapshot dating back to March 2007. This is hopelessly out of date. Since then the FFMPEG team have made significant progress in multi-threading their H.264/AVC decoder. This is critical for decoding high bitrate 1080p HD content, which is generally too much for even the fastest single core to handle.

The current situation is that multi-core owners can play files using FFDShow on Windows that won't play on Ubuntu, even though it's using code from the same free software project.

Unfortunately, it appears this package has not been updated for Hardy either.

It's pointless to wait for a new release, as the FFMPEG folks don't really do releases. By their own recommendation, it would be better for the Ubuntu package maintainers to work off a fresh FFMPEG SVN snapshot at the start of each 6-month development cycle.

[John Dong (jdong)]

I know a few weeks back siretart had a new ffmpeg staged and ready to upload, but I don't know exactly what happened on the progress of that. Now that we've hit Feature Freeze, I don't know if anyone on the team is confident enough to upload a new ffmpeg and be accountable for any possible regressions. Most of the team is familiar with the fact that the FFMPEG folks don't do releases, and I agree that we probably should've snapshotted a new release earlier on in the development cycle, but so much builds on ffmpeg that I personally would not be comfortable with introducing a new version of ffmpeg at this point in the release cycle unless it's been thoroughly tested already.

Which is why, we go back again, to siretart's staged upload. I'll try to ping him to respond on this.

[Degenerate (degeneratescum)]

Any further news on this?

I really don't want to change distro, but Ubuntu is useless to me without this functionality and I can't wait until October.

I'll happily volunteer as a tester if someone has a 64 bit .deb for me to install.

[noisymime (josh-noisymime)]

Agreed that this would really be nice to have in Hardy. The existing ffmpeg package is now a year old and there have been some significant improvements in this time that really should be available in Ubuntu.

[Lazy (ubuntu-bugs-oittaa)]

I think updated ffmpeg package should be included into hardy-updates repository. People shouldn't have to wait for the next big release to get proper video playback.

[Degenerate (degeneratescum)]

For the love of God, will someone please at least confirm that this package is being updated for Intrepid.

I can see it being ignored and then people saying "It's too late now ", just like they did with Hardy.

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

updated ffmpeg packages can be found in intrepid. backports for earlier versions of ubuntu (down to gutsy) can be found in the motumedia PPA. I'm sorry that I didn't have the time to do this for the hardy release in time.