RE: [XaraXtreme-dev] Re: mplayer binary

[Alex Bligh <alex@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles,

--On 11 June 2006 09:48 +0100 Charles Moir <CharlesM@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Alex said :
> > .... though if you are happy with ogg, it's free,
> > and free in a manner such that even Debian are happy ( :-) ),
> > and is thus around by default on all modern distributions as
> > far as I know.
>
> It's the ffmpeg codec we require, specifically the h.264 video codec
> part, that I'm more concerned about.
>
> I'm sort of surprised that worked out of the box for your distribution
> (Dapper is it?) or any distribution for that matter.

Dapper, yes.

> Is there a way we can ensure specific codecs are installed?  I sort of
> assumed the normal package dependency mechanisms would not work just for
> codecs, but perhaps that's wrong?

The only reason they wouldn't work is if the CODECs weren't available as a
package. For instance, if they might be in Multiverse but not Universe and
Multiverse might not be selected. But if the reason why they were not in
Base/Universe etc. was IPR related then from a Debian/Ubuntu point of view
you'd have a problem anyway, as you couldn't ship them as part of our
package and get them into Base, and obviously a package in Base can't
depend on something that's not in Base.

IE if the dependency is soluble, packages will fix it.

> And when you say your default mplayer worked but he shipped one didn't,
> do you mean the platform provided mplayer worked (is it standard?) and
> the one we shipped did not?

I mean the Dapper distribution provided mplayer worked fine (I'm pretty
sure it's standard, yes - if not installed by default then available
by default); and the one you shipped did not work at all. Clearly I'm
not running a virgin Dapper install (I've pulled in a pile of stuff)
so conceivably something might have pulled in some additional mplayer
codecs, but I can't recall doing anything that might have caused this
to happen.

Alex