(2013-07-13, 17:46)Ned Scott Wrote: XBMC's dependency on ffmpeg patches already lead us to being rejected on several official linux application repositories, such as Debian and Ubuntu.
I realize it's been over a year since the above was posted but here is my question. From everything I am reading, it appears that both MythTV and VLC have figured out how to modify ffmpeg for their specific requirements, including the support of closed captions. Since I am not a developer or a programmer, I may not understand all the nuances of this, but the last time I looked both VLC and MythTV were available from the official Ubuntu repositories (at least they show up in synaptic). So what are they doing different, and why can't Kodi do whatever they are doing?
My understanding also is that the ffmpeg project has become fragmented and that there was a big split about three years ago where some developers left ffmpeg to start a competing project (libav). So, waiting for the ffmpeg developers to address this issue may be an exercise in futility. As late as September of this year, Carl Eugen Hoyos of that project posted that "FFmpeg does not (yet) support Closed Captions" and further discussion in
that thread did not provide any indication that they are in fact working on this, or consider it any kind of priority. I wish they would, because in some cases I have a need to use ffmpeg to do various conversions on recordings and whenever I do, the closed captions disappear, even when the video stream is simply copied and the only transformations are on the audio.
You say you understand the need to enable this support but it seems to me that at some point you need to decide whether you feel the need badly enough to emulate whatever VLC and MythTV are doing, and if you do decide to follow their path then that might get Kodi into the official Ubuntu/Debian repositories, if ffmpeg patches really are the issue now. Your hearing impaired users would really appreciate it.
I would also mention that Kodi is now being included on devices that are sold in the United States, such as the just-announced
CuBoxTV which comes with OpenELEC, which is of course based on Kodi. The CuBoxTV at least could be considered the rendering device as discussed in svet-am's post (
#17), so the fact that Kodi isn't supporting closed captions could potentially become a big problem for them, if not for you guys directly. I don't know if that matters in the slightest to you guys, but law or no law I just wish that if the ffmpeg developers don't deliver real soon now, that at some point in the near future you'd do the right thing and stop waiting for them, if that's what is happening. You may not consider the lack of closed captions that important or all that urgent to fix, but you might think differently if you had a son, daughter, sibling, or parent that could not enjoy any Kodi content because of a hearing impairment.