[Libreoffice-qa] Media Support in LibreOffice

[Robinson Tryon]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Alexander Thurgood
<alex.thurgood at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, unfortunately, I don't have Xiph or WebMQT installed.
>
> AVI playback on QT depends on the particular codec used to create the
> AVI, Apple was never very good at supporting this format and most don't
> work.

Hmm. We should definitely choose some test media from archive.org and
use that for consistency in our tests.

> At present, the video codecs for which support was removed by Apple in
> QuickTime 10.3 are converted on the fly to Apple's current H264 codec.

I'm not sure what you mean: Are you suggesting that OS X/QuickTime
10.3 is doing on-the-fly transcoding of some content?

> If a user wants read/export support for codecs that were previously
> supported by Apple, then they can still download QuickTime 7 (for the
> moment at least, but that'll be pulled soon enough no doubt).

If QuickTime 7 is EOL, or is only available on versions of OSX that we
are moving away from, then let's ignore that.

> Any other formats require add-ons, either like the ones you mention for
> QuickTime, or else separate programs.
>
> Perian, despite development and support having stopped, is still
> reported as working on 10.9
> I use Flip4Mac or FlipPlayer for WMV video stuff that QuickTime
> can't/couldn't handle.
> I also have VLC and MPlayerX.

So Perian still might be an option for some users? That's actually
very useful. If Perian is indeed still compatible with modern builds
of OS X, then that might be our best option to promote for audio/video
playback inside LO. Have you tested that at all?

AFAIK neither installing VLC nor installing MPlayerX will add codec
support to QuickTime, correct?

> Obviously, if there is no support in QuickTime for the video format you
> want to play in LO, then you are stuck, because you won't even be able
> to insert the file, let alone play it back if someone else has given you
> a file with an unsupported video codec in it. The same goes in general
> for the audio codec support.

To clarify, you're suggesting that one will only be able to insert an
audio/video file if the container format is supported by QuickTime,
right?

For example, you did a test on OX X 10.9.3 with LO 4.4.0.0 (master) of
WebM, and able to insert, preview, and get sound playback. That
suggests that your QuickTime (and any added Components) supports
- MKV container
- Vorbis codec
But probably doesn't support
- VP8 video codec

Best,
 --R

-- 
Robinson Tryon
QA Engineer - The Document Foundation
Volunteer Coordinator - LibreOffice Community Outreach
qubit at libreoffice.org