416: Ffmpeg, Aqualung, Sweep recompiled

I have decided against LADSPA support. Not for the builtin Puppy, it can easily be provided by extra PET packages. The problem is that Aqualung requires 'liblrdf', but that in turns needs 'raptor', and I thought it wasn't worth the extra weight added to Puppy.

On the otherhand, AAC is probably worthy to be included in the default Puppy. We already have 'faac' and 'faad2' PET packages in the pet_packages-4 repo, so I installed those, made them builtin.

The 'faac' PET package is 292KB, 'faad2' is 182KB, so they are adding about 0.45MB, at a time when I am trying to reduce the size of the ISO. Oh well.

I then recompiled ffmpeg. Now, as I have explained on previous occasions, I'm still using a rather old version of ffmpeg...

ffmpeg 2007-10-07
This configuration is exactly as it was in the T2 build...
# ./configure --arch=i486 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-liba52 --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-pthreads --enable-small --enable-libogg --enable-libvorbis --enable-gpl --enable-shared --enable-pp --disable-debug --prefix=/usr

Every cloud has a silver lining! The ffmpeg package that I have been using for all 4.x and Woof builds was compiled in T2 back in November 2007. The PET package was 1600KB. Now it is 1326KB. The reason is, there are more shared libraries in the system now, that ffmpeg is making use of (I think).

I then recompiled Aqualung and Sweep...

aqualung 0.9beta10
# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --with-jack=no --with-mod=no --with-mpc=no --with-mac=no --with-lua=no

sweep 0.9.3
# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --build=i486-pc-linux-gnu

Testing
I have my collection of media files. Today I found some very small .m4a and .aac audio files, added those to the collection -- I think .m4a is AAC, so I don't know what or if any difference between those two types.
Heh heh, I've got 'goodluck.m4a', that says "Good luck out there buddy, you're gonna need it" -- I reckon I'll put it into /usr/share/audio, which is a collection of audio files for apps to use -- maybe Puppy could play it when there is a connection made to the Internet! The file is only 15KB.

Aqualung plays all the audio files perfectly.
Sweep won't play the .m4a or .aac files, plays the others.

Now, I have something to report about the Intel video driver. 416 has the old i810_drv.so, and that's what Xorg always uses. This driver is taken from Xorg 7.2, whereas 416 is using 7.3 and i810 was a symlink to the new driver, intel_drv.so. The file intel_drv.so is still there, it's just not being used.

Well, the old driver seemed to be working fine on machines that I tested (well, only two of them), but today I made a discovery. Playing Realmedia video files, they render too bright, washed out. I edited /etc/X11/Xorg.conf and changed back to the "intel" video driver and all was well.

So, 416 is uploading now, and it has the "i810" driver, so you might have to change it over like I did.

What I will probably do is leave them both in, but rename 'i810_drv.so' to something else so that it is disabled, but put something into the Xorg Wizard to enable it, for those people who need it. That will be done for 417.

Anyway, running the proper "intel" driver and testing gxine...
Yep, all my video test files play okay, DVD plays fine, audio CD plays fine.

Here is where I got the "good luck" audio file:
https://www.cocoavillagepublishing.com/ringers/m4a/goodluck.m4a

---

Comments

AAC audio codec
Username: tempestuous
Yes, .m4a and .aac files both have the AAC audio codec, it's just the file container structure which differs. .m4a is the MP4 audio file container format. When you see an .mp4 extension, it means that the file includes video as well. .aac is a raw audio container format. I believe it was developed so that the AAC codec could be used for streaming audio applications.

Tags: woof