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x264 ffmpeg 224MB for video?

On one installation I tried upgrading and except for x264 a ton of new stuff wanted to be installed.  I tried to see who needs x264 and there was nobody.  Somehow x264 was installed as a dependency and was left as an orphan, or some dependant dropped it?  So I removed x264.  I know that on the last upgrade there were no unsatisfied dependencies, this is all from x264 I think.
I went back to an installation with more software and checked to see what is going on there, pactree -r showed x264 needing ffmpeg and ffmpeg needing x264 (I don't know what's wrong with pactree -r, either I am reading it wrong or it is out of whack, but I've never seen this before).  Ends up that smplayer needs mpv, and mpv needs a whole bunch of other stuff.  If removed I save 220+MB of stored software.  Are there alternatives?  Yes, use the browser to watch local video files.

Has something changed in their interdependencies?

Re: x264 ffmpeg 224MB for video?

Reply #1 –
I don't think anything has changed has it? ffmpeg  encodes and thus needs an encoder, so x264 should have always been a dependency. With the way arch packages things (i.e. puts a bunch of stuff together at once), ffmpeg provides the codecs, encoders, and all that stuff so it's a pretty big package. And of course a lot of things depend on it (browsers, video players, etc.) since it provides very important libraries.

As for mpv, it's a fairly complex piece of software with a ton of options. Arch packages it to enable as many things (vulkan, wayland, lua, etc.) as reasonably possible which is why it has a large amount of dependencies. It's certainly possible to run your own build and trim it down to offer only the things you need. Keep in mind though that video playback is incredibly complicated so basically any video playing software is going to be rather large.

For me personally, I hate watching videos in the browser for lots of reasons (tends to be inefficient, lack of customization, poor scaling, etc.), so I watch as many things as I can in mpv instead (mpv can open urls).

Re: x264 ffmpeg 224MB for video?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Dudemanguy – on
I don't think anything has changed has it? ffmpeg  encodes and thus needs an encoder, so x264 should have always been a dependency

But ffmpeg wasn't installed before, x264 was but I can't tell as a dependency to what.  It is x264 update that brings everything in:

Code: [Select]
pacman -S x264

world/ffmpeg                               1:4.1.2-2           29.13 MiB
world/jack                                 0.125.0-7            2.83 MiB
world/lame                                 3.100-2              0.97 MiB
world/libiec61883                          1.2.0-5              0.15 MiB
world/libvpx                               1.8.0-1              4.76 MiB
world/opus                                 1.3-1                1.77 MiB
world/sdl2                                 2.0.9-1              2.94 MiB
system/sysfsutils                          2.1.0-10             0.15 MiB
world/v4l-utils                            1.16.3-1             4.16 MiB
world/zita-resampler                       1.6.2-1              0.24 MiB
world/x264            2:155.r0a84d986-2.1  2:157.r72db4377-1    0.08 MiB
# pactree -r x264
x264
└─gst-plugins-ugly
# pactree -r gst-plugins-ugly
gst-ugly returns nothing, like it is an orphan

trying to remove it I get this:
Code: [Select]
pacman -Rnsu gst-plugins-ugly

a52dec            0.7.4-10              -0.15 MiB
l-smash           2.14.5-1              -1.04 MiB
libcddb           1.3.2-5               -0.16 MiB
libcdio           2.0.0-1               -0.88 MiB
libdvdread        6.0.1-1               -0.31 MiB
libmpeg2          0.5.1-6               -0.25 MiB
libsidplay        1.36.59-9             -0.28 MiB
opencore-amr      0.1.5-2               -0.27 MiB
x264              2:155.r0a84d986-2.1   -3.70 MiB
gst-plugins-ugly  1.14.4-1              -1.28 MiB

In other words it seems as if I intentionally had in the past installed gst...ugly, which needed x264, and new x264 needs much more than it did in the past.  It may be the case that I had installed mpv/smplayer and removed it with simple pacman -R and it left its trash behind.

Re: x264 ffmpeg 224MB for video?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: fungalnet – on
But ffmpeg wasn't installed before, x264 was but I can't tell as a dependency to what.  It is x264 update that brings everything in:


That is strange. Checking the history of x264, it has always had a dependency on libavcodec, libavformat, etc. which is provided by the ffmpeg package which is what I expected. I'm not sure how you didn't have ffmpeg installed.