Bug#1056597: ffmpeg: drawtext filter missing from ffmpeg binaries

[Slim Joe]

Package: ffmpeg
Version: 7:6.1-4
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

The FFmpeg binaries (i.e. ffplay and ffmpeg) no longer
provides the drawtext filter, useful for embedding text (such
as subtitles and time codes) into a video.

Here's a simple test command using a legally available video.

$ ffplay -i https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/escape-to-freedom/videos/escape-to-freedom-720p.webm -vf "drawtext=x=20:y=20:fontsize=24:fontcolor=gold:text='%{localtime \: %T %Z%n(%F)}'"

The relevant portion of stderr from this command is this:

[AVFilterGraph @ 0x7f6ae4003e40] No such filter: 'drawtext'
[AVFilterGraph @ 0x7f6ae4003e40] Error processing filtergraph: Filter not found

A shallow search for a similar bug turns up the following link
from the ArchLinux bug tracker ("drawtext filter not available",
dated "Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 15:17 GMT"):

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/80327

The recommended solution is to recompile FFmpeg with the
"--enable-libharfbuzz" option. There is a libharfbuzz-dev
package in Debian, so this should not be a problem (assuming
the ArchLinux bug report is correct).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (900, 'testing'), (90, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Versions of packages ffmpeg depends on:
ii libavcodec60 7:6.1-3
ii libavdevice60 7:6.1-3
ii libavfilter9 7:6.1-3
ii libavformat60 7:6.1-3
ii libavutil58 7:6.1-3
ii libc6 2.37-12
ii libpostproc57 7:6.1-3
ii libsdl2-2.0-0 2.28.5+dfsg-2
ii libswresample4 7:6.1-3
ii libswscale7 7:6.1-3

[Leo Butler]

On 11/28/23, Paul B Mahol <one...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 9:40 PM Leo Butler via ffmpeg-user <
> ffmpe...@ffmpeg.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I ran into this problem with the current Debian testing build, so I
>> thought I would try the static build. Both are compiled with
>> --enable-libfreetype but both barf on a drawtext filter. I am attaching
>> the log file from the static build.
>>
>> According to:
>>
>> https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#drawtext-1
>>
>> the libfreetype library should be sufficient.
>>
>>
> Citation from that link:
>
> To enable compilation of this filter, you need to configure FFmpeg with
> --enable-libfreetype and --enable-libharfbuzz. To enable default font
> fallback and the font option you need to configure FFmpeg with
> --enable-libfontconfig. To enable the text_shaping option, you need to
> configure FFmpeg with --enable-libfribidi.
>
> So your statements are invalid.

You are correct.

It looks like in commit 1eeb59a2099 you added the libharfbuzz
dependency (6 months ago).
But you did not include this change in the Changelog. I will guess
that downstream packagers, including Debian and whoever it is who
builds unofficial binaries, missed this new dependency. Hence, their
packages are broken.

Please fix this, Paul. Those folks shouldn't need to wade through
every commit message in order to build ffmpeg correctly.

Thanks,
Leo