[Libav-user] Would anyone find an OS X / Cocoa / Swift wrapper for Libav useful?

Info || Non-Lethal Applications info at non-lethal-applications.com
Sun Jan 25 00:25:34 CET 2015


>> for asking design questions on the mailing list and being relegated to
>> reading through undocumented source code for a month “open”. Sure it is
>> free of licensing charges, but FFmpeg is not free — unless you have got
>> a vanilla use-case encapsulated in the canned examples, you are most
>> likely in for a deep-sea expedition, and you’ll most definitely be
>> investing a large amount of time trying to understand how to use it. 
> 
> The main issue is actually that the FFmpeg API is pretty low-level,
> while many users expect something higher level. (Somewhat typical: a
> user wants frame N of video in a specific format. Yeah, implementing
> this using the raw FFmpeg API will take some time.)


I’d like to chime in on that one.
While I’m using FFmpeg on OS X only (at least right now), I wouldn’t insist of having an OS X only wrapper.
A C++ cross-platform one would work just as well for me. 

Alternatively, it would be really cool to add a high-level API for the most common use cases to the roadmap:
Getting frame N of video in a specific format, getting audio samples from N to M in a specific format.

As one of the main issues of libavformat seems to be its seeking abilities, it would make a lot of sense from my perspective to encapsulate these issues in a higher level API.
If this is not provided, every user will need to handle seeking issues he encounters with a specific format/codec combination with a new if (case x) doY(); statement.
If it was encapsulated, seeking issues could be solved over time.

I don’t know FFmpeg good enough to know if there’s a policy / design philosophy that doesn’t allow for something like this.

Best regards,

Flo


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