ffmpeg install with libx264 (h264) on Fedora

The information for this is VERY very sparse, so here is a summary of what I have found.

Get all the fancy codecs

# yum -y install libmatroska-devel libmkv-devel mkvtoolnix-gui ogmrip themonospot-plugin-mkv themonospot amrnb-tools amrnb-devel amrnb amrwb-tools amrwb-devel amrwb bzip2-devel bzip2-libs bzip2 libdc1394-tools libdc1394-devel libdc1394 dirac-libs dirac-devel dirac faac-devel faac faad2-libs.x86_64 faad2-devel faad2 gsm-tools gsm-devel gsm lame-libs lame-devel lame twolame-libs twolame-devel twolame openjpeg-libs openjpeg-devel openjpeg ImageMagick schroedinger-devel schroedinger speex-tools speex-devel speex libtheora-devel theora-tools byzanz istanbul libtheora libvorbis-devel vorbisgain liboggz-devel libfishsound vorbis-tools x264-libs x264-devel x264 h264enc imlib2-devel libvdpau-devel opencore-amr-devel SDL-devel texi2html xvidcore-devel yasm

Install libx264

Get the libx264 package from http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html.
The link to the actual file is ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/x264/snapshots/last_x264.tar.bz2

Download it, then..

# cd ~/Downloads/
# tar -xjvf last_x264.tar.bz2
# cd last_x264
# ./configure --enable-shared
# make
# make install
# ldconfig

Install ffmpeg

Just use your browser. From http://ffmpeg.org/download.html find the latest stable release, which is currently http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-0.8.7.tar.bz2. Download it, then...

# cd ~/Downloads
# tar xvfj ffmpeg-0.8.7.tar.bz2
# cd ffmpeg-0.8.7
# ./configure --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-shared
# make
# make install

ffmpeg is now installed with libx264 (h264).

Courtesy: http://www.saiweb.co.uk/linux/ffmpeg-install-with-libx264-h264

It works! I'm no longer getting Unknown encoder 'libx264' message.

Use ffmpeg

For example, convert a Flash video compressed using VP8 codec to H264. Am wondering which codec produces a smaller file.

# ffmpeg -i aflashfile.flv -vcodec libx264 convertedfile.mp4

Wait, and shazam! A smaller file should be produced. But you may get this message:

error while loading shared libraries: libavdevice.so.52: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This error usually comes when ldconfig does not know where to search for the libraries, so, in order to help it out, on Fedora do the following:

# cd /etc/ld.so.conf.d

Add another file: custom-libs.conf
Inside, put :

/usr/local/lib

save, then do

# ldconfig

et voila again!!!

Syntax Highlighting with Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighliter 3.0

After struggling with it for a while, I managed to get Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighlighter to work.

The steps are:

1) Go to Blogspot's Design -> Edit Html page.

2) Find the </head>  tag. Just before it, past the following code:

Replace all occurences of <version> with current.

3) Find the </body> tag. Just before it, past the following code:

4) Start adding code snippets with
<pre> tags. Example:

alert('This is an example!');

5) The result of the above code would be:-

alert('This is an example!');

Moon's Law

Linux Mint lebih popular dari Ubuntu

Mengikut perangkaan lelaman DistroWatch, Linux Mint telah mengatasi kepopularan Ubuntu. Ketua Linux Mint, Clint Lefevre, mengakui Linux Mint meningkat 40% pada bulan lepas, dan kebanyakan pengguna berasal dari Ubuntu. Di lelaman Linux Mint, dinyatakan pengguna Linux Mint sekitar 1/3 pengguna Ubuntu, menjadikannya OS keempat paling popular selepas Windows, Mac OS X dan Ubuntu.

Oh ya, saya dah menggunakannya selama dua minggu, sebelum menyedari ia begitu popular!! Saya memilih Linux Mint kerana ia tidak mempunyai 'buntu' dalam namanya....

SURF - Speeded Up Robust Features

SURF stands for Speeded-Up Robust Features. It is inspired by SIFT, and is intended for applications that requires speed but does not require the precision of SIFT. SURF generates 64 features compared to SIFT which generates 128 features.

• SURF notes by Yet Another Blogger here.

FLANN Overview

Fast Library Approximate Nearest Neighbor (FLANN) algorithm was proposed by Marius Muja and David G. Lowe.

FLANN is a way to solve the nearest neighbor search (NNS), also known as proximity search, similarity search or closest point search, is an optimization problem for finding closest points in metric spaces. Donald Knuth in vol. 3 of The Art of Computer Programming (1973) called it the post-office problem, referring to an application of assigning to a residence the nearest post office.

A simple way to solve the nearest neighbor problem is by the k-NN algorithm, but k-NN will not work in very complex problems such as matching SIFT or SURF keypoints. An intermediate solution is to use KD-trees.

• Webpage by the original authors is here
• Available in OpenCV, which demo code here.
  
• FLANN notes by Yet Another Blogger here.

atan2 overview

The atan2 function computes the principal value of the arc tangent of y / x, using the signs of both arguments to determine the quadrant of the return value. It produces correct results even when the resulting angle is near π/2 or -π/2 (or x near 0).

The atan2 function is used mostly to convert from rectangular (x,y) to polar (r, θ) coordinates that must satisfy x = r cos(θ) and y = r sin (θ). In general, conversions to polar coordinates should be computed thus

• atan2 ( ±0, -0) returns ± π.
• atan2 ( ±0, +0 ) returns ±0.
• atan2 ( ±0, x ) returns ±π for x < 0.
• atan2 ( ±0 , x ) returns ±0 for x > 0.
• atan2 ( ±0 ) returns -π/2 for y > 0.
• atan2 ( ±y, -∞ ) returns ±π for finite y > 0.
• atan2 ( ±y, +∞ ) returns ±0 for finite y > 0.
• atan2 ( ±∞, +x ) returns ±π/2 for finite x.
• atan2 ( ±∞, -∞ ) returns ±3π/4.
• atan2 ( ±∞, +∞ ) returns ±π/4.

A few well-chosen phrases

GCC 4.6 breaks SystemC

When upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10, SystemC programs won't work anymore.
Update your makefiles to include the -fpermissive flag, like so:

SYSTEMC=/usr/local/systemc
LDFLAGS= -L$(SYSTEMC)/lib-linux -lsystemc
CXXFLAGS=-Wno-deprecated -I$(SYSTEMC)/include -fpermissive

all:
 g++ $(CXXFLAGS) *.cpp $(LDFLAGS)
 ./a.out

You may need to recompile the SystemC library, which case the flag must be added to the configure command:

$ sudo ../configure --prefix=/usr/local/systemc CPPFLAGS=-fpermissive

By giving the syntax above, I also managed to get SystemC running in Fedora. Goodbye Ubuntu!

Removing unneeded Fedora kernels

Install the yum-utils package from Fedora Extras (

# yum install yum-utils

then do

# package-cleanup --oldkernels"

By default package-cleanup keeps the last 2 kernels on the systems, just in the case the latest blows up.