[Discuss] Comparison KDE and Gnome (metacity) with ffmpeg in Ubuntu

[Deryk Barker]

On 14-07-29 08:30 PM, Murray Strome wrote:
> Let me preface this by noting that Ubuntu has dropped ffmpeg from its 
> repositories. On one of my computers, when I "upgraded" to 14.04 it 
> quit working (this was quite a while ago). Since I had a working 
> version of 12.04 on that computer, and avconv (the Ubuntu preferred 
> "equivalent" to ffmpeg) worked well I was not in any great hurry to 
> fix 14.04.
> However, the HD with Windows 7 and 14.04 was beginning to show signs 
> of old age, so I decided to replace it before it failed. This involved 
> cloning the Windows 7 C partition and creating partitions for a new 
> install of 14.04. I am running KDE on another computer, so thought I 
> would install that. I installed a Western Digital Black HD, which is 
> about the only one that still has a five year manufacturer's warranty.
>
> First thing I noticed was that neither ffmpeg or avconv were in the 
> repositories. However, if I installed winff, avconv gets installed. 
> However, it still does not work for me -- all kinds of problems but 
> bottom line is that it is useless (I have reported this but developers 
> seem to think there is nothing wrong). Winff doesn't work either.
>
> I then installed ffmpeg following the instructions at:
> https://launchpad.net/~jon-severinsson/+archive/ubuntu/ffmpeg?field.series_filter=trusty 
>
>
> In KDE, when I run ffmpeg it starts out OK but the conversion rate was 
> only about 13 frames per second, and it just stalled after converting 
> only about 4 minutes of video.
>
> I was going to reboot into 12.04 but decided to first try loading some 
> other windows manager.  I just logged in using Gnome Flashback 
> (Metacity) and it looks quite good to me. But what REALLY amazed me is 
> that when I ran ffmpeg (with exactly the same parameters as I had used 
> in KDE on the same computer), the conversion rate was about 180-195 
> fps. Under 12.04, it was around 60-70, so nearly triple the speed.
>
> I am not really sure what this might mean for other programs, but I 
> was really surprised and amazed by this!
>
> I don't really understand why Ubuntu continues to push avconv, which 
> no longer works. The original reason seemed to have something to do 
> with using libav, but ffmpeg uses that now as well. I have never been 
> able to get a straight answer (or even any answer at all) from the 
> Ubuntu or avconv developers.
>

Definitely a concern. I'm running Mint 16 which is derived from Ubuntu 
13.10; I haven't managed to find out whether Mint 17 still has ffmpeg, 
but I use it a LOT, so this is important to me.

OTOH when trying to discover whether Mint 178 has ffmpeg or not, I cam 
across this: 
http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-ffmpeg-2-2-2-muybridge-on-ubuntu-14-04-linux-mint-17-pinguy-os-14-04-and-linux-mint-17/ 
which might be of interest, unless it is merely a repetition of what you 
already have.

On Mint 17 running ffmpeg for video conversion seems to run at a decent 
speed, certainly faster than the 13FPS you were getting - and I'm 
running KDE.


deryk

-- 
Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept.
Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada