My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

I finally updated my avidemux package

I have an avidemux package in my (restricted) repository.
But… it had not been refreshed since Slackware 14.0 (8 years old now) and its binaries stopped working on Slackware long ago. Looking back at the packaging work I did today, I guess the thing that kept me from updating that Avidemux package was the numerous dependencies that also needed an update (they all were stuck at an old Slackware 14.0 release).

In the midst of a full week of holidays and waiting for my rye/honey sourdough bread dough to ferment, I had plenty time to devote to the creation of a fresh package for  Avidemux 2.8.0. This was recently released; yesterday actually!
And not just avidemux needed some work on its SlackBuild script; I needed to update ageing scripts for aften, faac, faad2, libdca, libfdk-aac, opencore-amr, x264 and xvidcore, and added a x265 package before I could compile avidemux with full support for codecs and plugins.

Based on the imminent (fingers crossed) release of Slackware 15.0 according to Patrick himself, I decided to create these packages only for Slackware-current (soon to become 15.0). I also cleaned out ancient versions of all these packages. They are now removed for Slackware 14.1 and older.
Note that faac and libfdk-aac just like avidemux contain patent-encumbered software (the AAC encoder) and due to that circumstance  the three packages are banished to my ‘restricted repository‘ which is hosted outside the US of A so that the patent trolls won’t bother Pat.

Let me cue you in about Avidemux in case you are not familiar with the program.
It’s a video editor supporting many video formats thanks to the built-in ffmpeg libraries and many plugins. It allows for a decent level of automation through tasks and scripts, and it has a command-line interface next to its Qt5-based graphical user interface.

Some of the 2.8.0 release highlights: Avidemux is now able to convert HDR video to SDR with tone mapping using a variety of methods. The FFV1 encoder has been added again. TrueHD audio tracks can be decoded and are supported for Matroska containers. The internal ffmpeg libraries are the latest 4.4.1 version. It integrates better with pulseaudio in terms of volume adjustments.

In case you are interested in some comparisons between the functionality of Avidemux and its competitors, here are some pointers. In terms of video conversion capability it compares to Handbrake (also in my repository), see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_converters. When you look at its video cutting and edting qualities on the other hand, Avidemux is better compared with Kdenlive which is included in Slackware as part of KDE Plasma5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software

FYI… my sourdough bread is out of the oven, and it’s smelling great!

12 Comments

  1. Andrew Patrzalek

    Thanks for the update!
    When I was very young we would visit my grandparents in Canada. The sourdough bread then and there has been my benchmark for which I have not found a bread to best it, especially not here in New York.
    Congrats on a successful starter.

    • alienbob

      My starter is roughly 8 years old now. It started from rye but has swung from being based on white flour for several years, back to 100% rye. The breads rise and taste better with a rye starter.
      The bummer is that this is only the second bread I’ve baked in the past 5 years… since I switched jobs from IBM to ASML there has not been much time and peace of mind to bake. Unfortunately. I have kept that starter alive for all those years, I store it in the fridge except when it is feeding time.

      Only after having slept a lot the past week (holidays, no obligations) my mind was in the proper state to plan a fresh bake. I snipped off a small bit when the bread had not yet fully cooled down and the taste of the rye & honey sourdough with some real butter on top was amazing. Yearning for more bakes now.

      • Jen

        I need to get a starter going again. I started another in March of 2020, but didn’t feed it that following winter. Oops.

  2. J_W (Shinichi Abe)

    Hi, Thank you for updating the script.
    The related libraries and also the main source of avidemux-2.8.0 were successfully compiled under 15.0RC2 and is working fine so far.

    Unfortunately, Japanese localization of the upstream source is not enough now, however since some Japan user kindly created Japanese localization file (avidemux_ja.qm) for version 2.8.0, I added a small modification to your script so that the updated Japanese localized file to be included.

    screen shot sample)
    https://flic.kr/p/2mUnomM

    Thank you again for your update and I wish for the glorious coming year!

    • alienbob

      Let’s hope the Japanese localization gets fixed in the avidemux sources. Let me know if you see that happen so that I can rebuild the package.

  3. J_W (Shinichi Abe)

    Hi,
    Thank you for your comment and support.
    Now, I’m trying to contact to the creator of Japanese i18n data and will ask him to merge updated *.ts file to avidemux upstream.

    BTW, my current tentative improvement for Japanese localization is to replace avidemux_ja.qm to the updated avidemux_ja.qm like below.


    # Replace Japanese localization data
    rm $PKG/usr/share/avidemux6/qt5/i18n/avidemux_ja.qm
    unzip -p $SRCDIR/Avidemux_v${VERSION}jp.zip Avidemux_v${VERSION}jp/avidemux_ja.qm > $PKG/usr/share/avidemux6/qt5/i18n/avidemux_ja.qm

    Cheers,

    P.S.
    In Japan, we have much snow this year!
    (Especially at my home town)
    https://flic.kr/p/2mUst1b

  4. J_W (Shinichi Abe)

    Hi,
    Happy new year!

    Regarding Japanese localization status of avidemux-2.8.0, I received new updated avidemux_ja.ts data from it’s translator.
    I also sent the improved ts data to upstream (fixounet.free.fr) and asked to merge it to their next release.
    I’m waiting their reply.
    Hope the Japanese localization gets fixed in next release.
    If there is any progress in the situation, I will inform you.

    Cheers,

  5. J_W (Shinichi Abe)

    Hi
    An improved Japanese translation has finally been merged to the master github of avidemux2.
    https://github.com/mean00/avidemux2_i18n/blob/master/avidemux_ja.ts

    I believe that the next release of avidemux-2.8.x will include this fix.
    Thank you for your support and suggestion on this issue.

  6. J_W (Shinichi Abe)

    Today, I received a reply from avidsemux2 upstream.
    My pull-request on updated Japanese translation has been merged into master branch.
    This update will be included to next release of avidemux2. (may be version-2.8.1)

    • alienbob

      Good news 🙂

  7. JW (Shinichi Abe)

    Hi,
    Avidemux-2.8.1 has been released now.
    And I confirmed that the latest Japanese translation was merged in 2.8.1.
    The package was compiled successfully with your SlackBuild of 2.8.0.
    Thank you for your effort.

    (screen-shot samples)
    https://flic.kr/p/2nTrqPV
    https://flic.kr/p/2nTr66J
    The translator’s name Tilt is an original translator’s name.

    Cheers!
    JW (Shinichi Abe)

    • alienbob

      Hi Abe,

      Nice! I will add avidemux to my TODO of packages to build.

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