Experimental ffmpeg (movie input/output) plugins

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

I just merged a branch that adds infrastructure to (cross-)compile ffmpeg
and a JNA-based set of Java classes.

Unfortunately, the cross-compilation for MacOSX does not work correctly:
there are Heisenbugs leading to Fiji crashing when initializing FFMPEG's
codecs and/or conversion tables.

Happily, these problems do not occur when compiling on MacOSX itself
(although PowerPC support is missing then; something that was criticized,
uhm, in a rather, uhm, funny way in the past).

So I created an update site just for these plugins and libraries:

http://pacific.mpi-cbg.de/~schindelin/ffmpeg-plugins/

If you want to know how you can add that update site, please have a look
at the documentation Gavin wrote recently:

http://pacific.mpi-cbg.de/How_to_add_a_plugin_distribution_site

How to use the plugins? Easy: File>Import>Movie (FFMPEG)... can read them,
and File>Save As>Movie (FFMPEG)... can write them.

The virtual stack mode is switched on by default when reading the movies,
although it might not work correctly if the information about the length
and/or frame rate is not complete.

To build the plugins, you need a C compiler (and probably a few more tools
such as yasm). The command line is, unsurprisingly:

./Build.sh plugins/FFMPEG_IO.jar

Note that these plugins will never be compiled by default, since they
require native libraries, which is platform-dependent in the common
case, and since the compilation takes quite a while.

Have a nice weekend,
Johannes

[Jariullah Safi]

I can't figure out how to compile this in MinGW. When I type in the
command you gave in the shell it outputs "./Build.sh: No such file or
directory"

Could you please help me with this?

On Apr 8, 12:23 pm, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schinde...@gmx.de>
wrote:

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Jariullah,

On Thu, 2 Jun 2011, Jariullah Safi wrote:

> I can't figure out how to compile this in MinGW. When I type in the
> command you gave in the shell it outputs "./Build.sh: No such file or
> directory"

It is not meant to be compiled with MinGW yet, although it might work
already (but you have to check out fiji.git as per
http://fiji.sc/Developing_Fiji).

However, Build.sh is a shell script, so you have to have a Shell
(preferably msysGit's Bash) running.

Ciao,
Johannes

[thomas...@gmail.com]

Hello, 

I found this while looking for a way to directly export nicely compressed movies from fiji. Thanks!

However, I have to use the file extension mp4 instead of mpeg for the export not to crash… (a matter of automatic format recognition apparently). And the file I get is properly read in QTX but not in QT7 (which crashes). Therefore Keynote cannot import it either.

In my opinion, it would be really convenient to get a few more option or at least to export by default with a more standard video encoding format (h264?). Maybe this can be achieved by some file name convention (although I doesn't look like from ffmpeg documentation).

Thank you in advance for your help. Best regards,

Thomas 

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Thomas,

On Thu, 24 May 2012, thomas...@gmail.com wrote:

> I found this while looking for a way to directly export nicely compressed
> movies from fiji. Thanks!
> However, I have to use the file extension mp4 instead of mpeg for the
> export not to crash… (a matter of automatic format recognition apparently).
> And the file I get is properly read in QTX but not in QT7 (which crashes).
> Therefore Keynote cannot import it either.
>
> In my opinion, it would be really convenient to get a few more option or at
> least to export by default with a more standard video encoding format
> (h264?). Maybe this can be achieved by some file name convention (although
> I doesn't look like from ffmpeg documentation).

Unfortunately, writing movies is not one of my current itches, so I need
to dedicate my time to other projects which are my itches.

If you want to play with the code, I am happy to give you pointers, but I
am simply unable to help you otherwise, sorry!

Ciao,
Johannes