Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Tag: editing

New handbrake and mkvtoolnix packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current

December 30, 2019 / / 13 Comments

handbrake_logoI was a couple of releases behind on the Handbrake video transcoding software. I am always a bit hesitant with upgrading Handbrake. It has a history of being hard to compile on the stable Slackware releases.

Most notably it is the GTK+3 based GUI for which our Slackware libraries are often too old. And indeed, with the latest 1.3.0 release I found that this would not compile on Slackware 14.2 despite the hack I already used for the previous package (1.2..2) which I created earlier in 2019. It took me a day to come up with a second patch that allows Handbrake 1.3.0 to compile against our gtk+3 3.18.9 while in fact the program’s GUI component wants gtk+3 3.20.0 or higher.
So, Slackware 14.2 users – please tell me if you find that some functionality of the GUI is not working… it should all work properly but you never know.
In addition, I had to add a patch to make the new dav1d AV1 decoder compile on Slackware 14.2 but luckily I could just re-implement what I had already done for VLC.

The package for Slackware-current built without any glitches. Yay.

Note that my ‘handbrake‘ package does not have any external dependencies – unlike the slackbuilds.org version.
Install and run, it’s that simple. Everything you need is compiled statically into the package. The ‘HandBrakeCLI‘ program is the command-line variant, whereas ‘ghb‘ is the GUI variant of HandBrake, also found in the “Multimedia” menu of your desktop environment.

Packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current with AAC audio encoding support can be obtained from my “restricted” repository:

The variant which does not support AAC audio encoding and therefore does not violate the stupid US software patents can be downloaded from the regular repository:

 

I also have neglected my mkvtoolnix package for a while. You may be aware already that MKVToolNix is a set of tools to create, alter and inspect Matroska files (most widely known as the MKV video container format).

When working on the handbrake packages, I decided to check out the latest mkvtoolnix as well. And what do you know… the latest release won’t compile on Slackware 14.2!
I went back through the releases of 2019 and found that 38.0.0 is the most recent version which still compiles using the gcc compiler of Slackware 14.2 against the boost libraries of Slackware 14.2. Anything newer will not compile. End of the line for mkvtoolnix releases on the stable Slackware then.
These issues are absent on Slackware-current. I could compile mkvtoolnix 41.0.0 (the most recent release) easily.

Note the dependencies for mkvtoolnix:
Since its GUI and multimedia support is based on Qt5, you’ll have to install libxkbcommon and qt5 from my repository. And the qt5 dependencies as well: OpenAL and SDL_sound. On Slackware 14.2 two more even: libinput and libwacom.
Starting with mkvtoolnix 20.0.0 there’s another, new, dependency: cmark. Like with all the other dependencies I mentioned, cmark can be downloaded from my repository or any of its mirrors.
Get all the packages here:

Enjoy! Eric

Handbrake reaches 1.0.0 milestone after 13 years of development

December 28, 2016 / / 27 Comments

handbrake_logoChristmas creates a different focus for the average IT guy, spending time with family instead of computers. It was nice. But it’s over and done now, even though the Christmas tree in the corner of our living room is still on fire (metaphorically speaking).

Tonight I have time to write about the latest Handbrake release. It took the developer team “only” 13 years to reach the stable milestone, 1.0.0. Congratulations are appropriate, because it is great software. But still there’s that nagging thought at the back of my mind… why the fuck is its GUI depending on a recent GTK+3 and therefore almost enforcing the use  of a Gnome-based distro? GTK has always been a moving target, theoretically separate from Gnome but in all honesty, the two are bonded with superglue. I can not compile Handbrake for Slackware 14.1 or older, and this GTK crap does not lend itself for static compilation inside the handbrake package. There now, I vomited a little. Why the fuck did they drop the Qt-based GUI? People can make bad decisions out of habit… this was definitely one.
I think we must be glad that we can compile the GUI for Handbrake 1.0.0 at all on Slackware 14.2.

By the way, compiling the command-line version of Handbrake is possible, even on Slackware 14.1 because that does not require GTK+3 as a dependency (although it depends on a lot of other X libraries on Slackware… i.e. the command-line program is unusable on a headless server without X.Org and friends installed).

Enjoy the new Handbrake!

handbrake-1.0.0

Packages for Slackware 14.2 and -current can be obtained from my “restricted” repository. Handbrake employs some software libraries that are under patent dispute (the MP3 and AAC audio encoders) so I can not host the package on the Slackware server in the US. The regular repository does have a handbrake directory but that hosts only the scripts, sources and patches, not the Slackware packages.

Get them here:

Eric

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