Sunday, May 25, 2008

Compiling AVIDemux on 64-bit Linux distro

AVIDemux is the best tool to rip DVDs, re-encode videos and edit them on the fly.

Sometimes it's a pain in the neck to compile stuff, especially on a 64-bit distro that has 32-bit compatibility libraries. Thankfully, guys at the Slamd64 forums are quite helpful in these matters.

I had an old copy of avidemux (version 2.3.0) which I worked on. I tried compiling the latest (version 2.4.1) but it requires "cmake" which I didn't have install, and didn't feel like going through the headache of finding its dependencies.

magic lines:
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib64"
CFLAGS="-O2 -fPIC" ./configure --prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/lib64 --includedir=/usr/include \
--with-jsapi-include=/usr/include/seamonkey-1.0.7/js/ --with-include-gettext
make -j4
make install

Without exporting LDFLAGS properly, you'll get an error like this:
/usr/lib/libXext.so: could not read symbols: File in wrong format

It was picking up the 32-bit lib instead of the 64-bit one. Exporting LDFLAGS properly solved this issue.

If you get something like this:
rm -f cs.gmo && : -c --statistics -o cs.gmo cs.po
mv: cannot stat `t-cs.gmo': No such file or directory

Make sure you have this in your configure line:
--with-include-gettext

* Found this in a RedHat archived text from 2004.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Compiling MPlayer on 64-bit Linux Distro

I had one H264 video which prevented the location bar to move and at some point, the audio would lead the video, and if I attempt to skip that part, it would play from start.

I thought it was Xine's fault for not being able to run the file properly, so I check whether there's a newer version or not, and there was so I updated, and Xine stopped working. No big deal, I had mplayer, but unfortunately it had the same old problems as Xine with that file.

Some guys suggested that the version I had of the H264 codec was compiled for a 32-bit distro, and it doesn't play well under 64-bit ones. That could be fixed with a recompile.

After some poking around at Slamd64 forums, I found some things that can help and this configure line made all the magic happen:
CFLAGS="-O2 -fPIC" ./configure --confdir=/etc --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64 \
--with-extralibdir=/usr/lib --enable-gui --enable-largefiles \
--win32codecsdir=/usr/lib/codecs --codecsdir=/usr/lib/codecs \
--xanimcodecsdir=/usr/lib/codecs --realcodecsdir=/usr/lib/codecs

MPlayer was compiled fine and worked fine, but I still have problems with that bloody video file. I tried re-encoding it using avidemux on my laptop (32-bit Kubuntu), but avidemux kept crashing.

Oh well, MPlayer works fine now, at least.