GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 153520
Loss of blue channel on split avis
Last modified: 2004-12-23 08:17:17 UTC
Open an AVI (mine are created from my Fuji Finepix 4700Zoom, but any will do). I did this using Xtns->Video->Split Into Frames xanim starts and plays the AVI in colour. The frames get loaded and are yellow/green in colour. On closer inspection in the Curves tool, there is no blue channel. This problem is also described here, where you will find screenshots... my problem is identical - http://carol.gimp.org/gimp/techniques/photographs/movies/ I have tracked down the problem to the Loki version of xanim, because any frames that I extract manually using xanim outside of GIMP also lose the blue data. This happens no matter what options I try to use on xanim. The reasons that I am raising the bug against gimp-gap are: 1) No known place to raise bugs against Loki xanim (is it actively developed now?) 2) gimp-gap depends on xanim and if it is going to continue to do so a fix should happen somehow. The current state of things makes gimp-gap useless for doing anything with my AVIs.
gimp-gap from cvs can use mplayer to split the frames. mplayer was not broken and delivered all of the available color channels to the frames. in order to install the current cvs gimp-gap, you need to install ffmpeg-0.4.8.tar.gz from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16082.
I couldn't get it to compile, I'll file additional information later when I'm in front of a Linux box :-)
OK I did finally get it to compile but only after hacking configure.in to remove the assumption that ffmpeg and libmpeg3 were installed in /usr/local. I can now Extract Videorange to get the frames in colour, but the xanim option is still in the menus and still gives me green/yellow output. I'll file a bug about Extract Videorange separately.
xanim is old unmaintained software, and i see no chance that anyone will fix that xanim related problems. Future releases of gimp-gap may continue to provide the xanim based "split video to frames" feature because xanim can handle some old videoformats (such as amiga iff anims) but without any support on the xanim application itself. I'll add an information label to the GIMP-GAP dialog for xanim based frame extract. "XANIM is old unmaintained software do not expect any support on XANIM-related problems" Remember that the current gimp-gap 2.1 CVS snapshot is an unstable development version. Especially the new features are not completely finished and may crash sometimes . But most of the features should basically work. The hardcoded assumption that libs (libmpeg3, libavformat, libavcodec) are installed at /usr/local is a temporary workaround in the configure.in file. i have to find out how to do checks if those libs are installed and where to find both libs and include files. ( please note that the GIMP-GAP CVS version is not ready to release yet, but help on that automake/autoconf topic is welcome ..) To Carol: The new gimp-gap 2.1.x does not use mplayer but can read videos with one of those libs: ffmpeg 0.4.8 (libavformat / libavcodec) libmpeg3-1.5.4 mplayer does support more decoder libraries than gimp-gap 2.1.x and will be able to handle more videoformats / codecs than gimp-gap.
CVS version of GIMP-GAP has additional MPlayer frontend support that can be used instead of the unmaintained XANIM frontend for extracting frames from videoformats that are not supported by ffmpeg and libmpeg3. (XANIM frontend is marked as old unmaintained software now)