Ffmpeg present two times in Manjaro?

Support Software & Applications
1

Hello all,

trying to compile a program against ffmpeg, I encountered that there seem to be two versions of that package installed in parallel:

$ pacman -Qs ffmpeg
local/ffmpeg 2:5.0-7
    Complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and video
local/ffmpeg4.4 4.4.1-5
    Complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and video

I am just wondering why there seem to be no conflicts at that point.

2

Some applications do not support ffmpeg 5.0 yet, so Arch created an ffmpeg4.4 package for compatibility reasons.

3

Thank you, that makes sense, indeed.

But when I want to compile a program written for ffmpeg 4.4, how do I direct the build process to use that package instead of 5.0?

Example: I wanted to compile chromium against the system ffmpeg. However, it seems that it is using the 5.0 includes by default, resulting in errors like

error: no member named 'channel_layout' in 'AVFrame'

This is because of a recent change, channel_layout is deprecated and was replaced by ch_layout. Unfortunately, they are of different types (while channel_layout was uint64, ch_layout is a more complex struct).

4

If you want to build against ffmpeg 4.4, you’ll need to specify it in the build() function:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH='/usr/lib/ffmpeg4.4/pkgconfig'

I just built chromium in the last few days against ffmpeg 5.0 just fine.

5

That’s reassuring. Which version did you use?
Reason for asking: In 103.0.5057.0, for example, some changes were applied which broke the ability to build the browser against system ffmpeg:
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/3565647
I had to revert this commit entirely, and additionally, had to apply the patches proposed at https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/3525614 - to get Chromium to compile against system ffmpeg.

6

I’ve built 101.0.4951.41, 101.0.4951.54 and 101.0.4951.64 recently.

7

Meanwhile, I got Chromium 103.0.5057.0 to compile against Manjaro’s ffmpeg-5.0 system package.
As discussed, https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/3565647 broke the ability to build against system ffmpeg as it introduces several changes only present in the ffmpeg development branch.
More detail: 1325301 - chromium - An open-source project to help move the web forward. - Monorail and subsequent comments.