GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 51400
Mpeg Plug-in crashes
Last modified: 2003-05-11 01:06:42 UTC
Any time I try to open an MPEG file with the mpeg plug-in, I get a message saying that the plug-in has crashed and that I should restart GIMP. I have tried getting updated mpeg lib, massaging the code, etc., but so far to no avail. I'm about out of ideas. Any input would be appreciated.
Re-assigning all Gimp bugs to default component owner (Gimp bugs list)
To be honest the solution I'd recommend would be to remove the MPEG plugin from GIMP, or replace it with the other MPEG plugin I've seen floating around (registry?). The current one, if it's the one I'm thinking of, is unmaintained and little more than a hack.
Well, the GAP MPEG plug-in that can be found on the registry uses libmpeg3. Last time I checked, you couldn't even build a shared version of libmpeg3 and from my experience with DirectFB (we have an MPEG video provider based on libmpeg3) it only loads a subset of MPEG. I wouldn't suggest including it for these reasons. Since reading MPEG movies with Gimp is a very special task only few people will ever need, it might actually make sense to drop support for MPEG in the official Gimp package. I'm undecided...
Do it! Kill! Destroy!
Me too! (tm) Well, I am not the blood-thirsty type of person who wants to kill and destroy everything ;-) but MPEG support is not used very often anyway, and those who need this can get it from the registry. One more reason to restart the discussion about the distribution of plug-ins on the developers mailing list. It would be nice if there was an easy way (from within the Gimp) to know what plugins are available. The ideal solution (with lots of magic) would be to do something like this when someone tries to load an MPEG file: "This type of file cannot be loaded because the MPEG plug-in is not installed. But if you are connected to the Internet, I can download one for you because I know that such a beast exists somewhere in the registry." Or something like that... Anyway, in the meantime... Kill! Kill! Errr... I mean, you should consider removing it until a better solution can be found.
Yeah, after some experimentation, I think it might be some conflict with KDE. I got the thing working under Blackbox. To tell the truth though, once I got it loaded, I found that the plug-in was actually pretty useless. It loads each frame as a layer (WTF!?!) and basically brought my system to its knees. Really doesn't seem worth bothering with. Now, if someone wanted to write a GVMP (GNU Video Manipulation Program) or something similar (with a better name!), possibly with GIMP integration, that would be a whole other ball game... :-) I know I'm not crazy enough to try though!
I doubt that there are interferences with KDE, but I have a few comments on your comments: One layer per frame is the standard way Gimp handles animations. This works fine for animated GIFs and should also work for very short MPEG files. The MPEG plug-in from Wolfgang Hofer available from the Registry however handles larger MPEG files much better and is integrated with the Gimp Animation Plug-in (the Video functionality in the Image menu). I suggest you try that one instead.
Let's kill it please, should I?
Knock yourself out...
I've removed the plug-in from the 1.3 tree: 2003-01-27 Sven Neumann <sven@gimp.org> * configure.in * plug-ins/common/Makefile.am * plug-ins/common/plugin-defs.pl * plug-ins/common/mpeg.c: removed the MPEG plug-in. It has been broken, unmaintained and caused nothing but trouble (#51400, #104522).
IMO we should not remove any plug-ins from the stable series. We never did that. I suggest to close as WONTFIX for 1.2.