

FFmpeg on Mac OS X How-to - garret
http://stephenjungels.com/jungels.net/articles/ffmpeg-howto.html

======
Zev
I had some problems when compiling faac/faad on my machine (Macbook Pro,
Leopard, Xcode 3.1). Could just be my luck, but here's what was wrong / the
fixes incase it happened to someone else.

On faac, I had errors like

    
    
      ../libtool: line 792: X--tag=CC: command not found 
      ../libtool: line 792: X--mode=compile: command not found"  
    

After googling around, turns out it was a problem with ltmain.sh - which
./bootstrap creates. It checks to see if the OS is Darwin, and then runs
glibtoolize instead of libtoolize (Apple includes glibtoolize it seems, its in
my /usr/bin). However glibtoolize isn't generating the correct file for some
reason. Not sure why this is. I've got autoconf/automake/libtool installed
from a past project so I used those instead of figuring out exactly what was
wrong.

To get FAAC to compile, I ran "aclocal -I .; autoheader; libtoolize
--automake; automake --add-missing; autoconf" manually instead. This one
worked properly and was able to install.

FAAD was had more wrong then just glibtoolize generating a wrong file. It
would generate a configure file, however it wasn't complete. The README here
didn't help install for OS X, and the only INSTALL file i could find was for
the xmms plugin. So I read the *nix README. Which said to run autoreconf -vif
first. That brought up:

    
    
      /usr/local/share/automake-1.10/am/depend2.am: am__fastdepCXX does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
      /usr/local/share/automake-1.10/am/depend2.am:   The usual way to define `am__fastdepCXX' is to add `AC_PROG_CXX'
      /usr/local/share/automake-1.10/am/depend2.am:   to `configure.in' and run `aclocal' and `autoconf' again.
    

To fix this, open up configure.in and find the only mention of AC_PROG_CXX.
Change that line from "dnl AC_PROG_CXX" to just "AC_PROG_CXX" Then rerun
"aclocal -I .; autoheader; libtoolize --automake; automake --add-missing;
autoconf" instead of relying on ./boostrap. Then it compiled correctly for me.

If anyone wants, I could just toss together a quick .pkg that would install
faac 1.26 and faad 2.61. lame (3.98) and ffmpeg's (latest svn, 14469) installs
were straightforward enough and didn't have issues so those shouldn't need a
pkg. Though ffmpeg was missing a ton of libraries. Suppose thats what I get
(along with fixing problems like the one above) for not using fink or
macports.

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kylec
If people are looking for a simple way to convert audio and video on Mac OS X,
I suggest looking into AudialHub and VisualHub by Techspansion
(<http://www.techspansion.com/>)

Though it's not free, I've been very impressed with the quality of the video
conversions I've done and the simplicity of the user interface.

(note: this is not my software, I'm just a fan)

~~~
Zev
IIRC, VisualHub uses ffmpeg for a number of video formats when converting.

~~~
kylec
You're right, that's one of the reasons why I posted. If you're looking for
the power and quality of ffmpeg but are intimidated by the interface (let's
face it, you are on a Mac for a reason ;) ) chances are you'll like VisualHub.
One added bonus I'm enjoying is the ability to distribute the processing via
XGrid.

------
uuilly
Our app uses ffmpeg. It was a total pain in the arse getting it to build on
Mac/Win/Linux w/ h.264. I have scripts that build it on each platform. If
anyone needs them email me.

~~~
DarkShikari
Is building libx264 really that difficult? As one of the developers I like to
take pride in the fact that we have so many _fewer_ dependencies than nearly
everything I else I have to compile these days; we require yasm or nasm, and
that's about it. Not to mention that it makes development a lot easier...

The biggest issues I've seen people have are mostly because their distribution
includes a really old x264 which they didn't update, or because they're mixing
apps compiled with PIC with those compiled without.

The former issue, fortunately, was resolved by getting ffmpeg to include an
option for our most powerful motion search mode--which was added only about 6
months ago. This meant ffmpeg wouldn't build unless you updated x264, which
forced everyone to start actually using builds from this century ;)

~~~
uuilly
Looking at my script for building ffmpeg w/ x264 on osx, x264 is not the
problem. Here is the ffmpeg configure line:

./configure --disable-vhook --disable-mmx --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl
--enable-libx264 --extra-ldflags="-l m"

Getting all these configure options right was a real PITA. The ffmpeg mailing
list is a very hostile environment and I found most of it from random
googling.

My configure line for x264 was: ./configure

So yes, you guys are all good.

BTW it is a really great library. You should be proud.

------
Oompa
I hate How-tos like this that resort to fink or Macports.

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thomasswift
this is brilliant, I just tried using macports, which didn't work, after a
quick break I found this link, now hopefully this works.

