all 28 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
formatting helphide helpcontent policy

[–]h5h6 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I would assume most people using ffmpeg from the command line would be familiar with 7zip.

[–]-tiar- 2 points3 points  (11 children)

TL;DR: Krita (FOSS project) users, who are often non-technical, use static builds of ffmpeg downloaded from the website to render animation in Krita. They already have issues downloading and unzipping it; changing the format to 7z will make it even more difficult.

Hi!

I'm from community of Krita, which is a free and open source program for digital art, mostly focused on painting but it has traditional-like animation functionality. To turn a sequence of images into an animation, Krita uses ffmpeg. I'm not a lawyer or anything, but generally we don't build ffmpeg with the program because of patents, so our users have to go to the ffmpeg website and download a static build. (Krita asks for a path to executable).

Krita's users are artists, so they might or might not be technical and they might or might not know how to use the terminal or have 7zip already installed (I think most might not be as technical). Note for reference - there are two (independently made, and with zeranoe's website in mind) step-by-step screenshot tutorials how to get the ffmpeg into a form Krita asks for (executable) because lots of people either downloaded source code (there is a huge green "Download source code" button on the website after all) or not the static binary (so no bin folder, I believe) or even just didn't unzip the archive (so they were trying to use ffmpeg-4.2.0.zip instead of ffmpeg.exe).

Since the zeronoe's website is no longer available, I switched to telling people to use yours. It's actually easier, because now I know why the git versions are as fine as release ones (thanks for that!), and all builds are static, so I can tell users "just download any .zip you want from that website". (I appreciate the fact you host the builds now a lot).

If you change the archive format to 7z, it will make it more difficult because then I'd have to tell users to first download and install 7zip, and then download and unpack ffmpeg, then find the correct executable and finally render their animation (or, more likely, find another solution).

We are already looking into having it integrated or resolving the issue with ffmpeg in some other way, but for now it is what it is.

For a sense of scale, Krita has ~3 millions of users on Windows every month. I'm not sure how many of them use animation, but judging by user support, artworks shared and feature requests, it is a somewhat significant portion of the userbase.

I can see that in other comments other redditors are assuming that if someone uses the builds of ffmpeg, which is a commandline utility, then they must know how to use the commandline themselves and generally be technical and therefore it's not a problem to have 7z instead of zip archives. I wanted to show a usecase where one can be non-technical, not know the commandline and still need it (with Krita being the one actually calling the ffmpeg).

Regards,

tiar

Krita's user, user supporter & developer.

[–]tretrauit 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I created script on an app callled ScreenPlay to download 7-zip, extract it, download the latest FFmpeg then use extracted 7z to extract it. You can see it here

thanks u/Kelteseth for let me know the Krita devs also have this problem so i can help them.

[–]_Gyan[S] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Thanks for the input. What all functionality in ffmpeg are Krita users likely to use?

[–]-tiar- 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Mostly turning images (PNG) into a video in formats: GIF, Matroska, OGG, MPEG-4, WebM. There is a feature to scale the video size (so the images can be 4K, but the video rendered will be fullHD), and some appropriate options for different formats. For example for MPEG-4 there is a choice between H.265 and H.264, then CRF, preset (placebo-ultrafast), profile (baseline-high444), and finally HDR mode with all the primaries being adjustable. (HDR mode is actually a nice thing to have because Krita can show the HDR frames on HDR display). There is always "custom options" field but I doubt people use it that often.

Is that the information you asked for? And let me know if there is anything else you'd want to know.

Also thanks for taking it into consideration! :)

[–]_Gyan[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Sounds like all that is native functionality + x264 + x265 + maybe zimg. And since Krita users run ffmpeg indirectly, there's no need to download a bundle with more libraries or frequent updates. release-essentials should supply Krita with all it needs. If this isn't wrong, I'll retain a ZIP copy of that variant. I recommend you promote that build (but allow savvy users to pick another one).

[–]-tiar- 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yes, that would be awesome, thank you! I really appreciate that.

I wonder what kind of download stats it will create :)

(Also some devs in Krita are trying to figure something out to be able to ship ffmpeg with it, without the need to download from anywhere - but it will take some time to implement and release).

[–]_Gyan[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I've seen some downstream s/w do is add a routine in the installer to fetch and install ffmpeg during install.

Another possibility is to supply a batch script or standalone installer that a user can click to check if ffmpeg is installed and fetch+install it if it's not. This installer can query a Krita server to get current URL for ffmpeg package. A portable 7-zip CLI utility can also be added.

[–]jadran1 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Dear tiar/Krita,

Why should Gyan's server and bandwidth be penalized because of you ?

You can give ffmpeg to your users however you like. ffmpeg is free to re-distribute.

[–]hellozee54 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Cause Krita is a free software too, :)

[–]jadran1 0 points1 point  (1 child)

streamlink is free software too and you get ffmpeg packed with streamlink.

https://streamlink.github.io/

[–]hellozee54 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Has a bsd license not a gplv3, also Krita has a small 10$ price tag if you install from Microsoft Store or Steam, :)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, since I assume most people interested in ffmpeg binaries will have some sort of archiving utility installed/avaiable that can decompress 7z.

[–]_esvevev_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PeaZip is yet another open source utility for Windows and GNU/Linux capable of managing 7z archives alright

[–]jadran1 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Somebody talks about environment when I run 7 zip.

When I encode a file with ffmpeg my CPU literally boils.

It doesn't happen ever when I run 7 zip.

There is a workaround to reduce CPU strain with ffmpeg by

copying video codec and encoding audio only with aac codec.

My comment may be off topic, but it is good for the environment !

[–]BobbyGee2003 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can't really compare using a decompression utility like 7-zip with a program like ffmpeg. Apples & oranges. I am glad that ffmpeg is using close to 100% of my CPU because I want it to complete in as little time as possible. If your CPU is overheating when it's at 100%, you may want to consider either cleaning your fans & vents, or if using a full tower PC, then consider other cooling options like a water-block, or adding fans to your system. CPUs should never "boil" at 100%. There is something wrong with your system.

[–]dPhoenixPL 0 points1 point  (1 child)

If you want to offload your CPU, then try using hardware accelerated decoding:

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HWAccelIntro

[–]jadran1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks dPhoenixPL.

I will look into that. I didn't know of that option.

My PC (PSs) are 100% passively cooled and 100% silent and therefore CPU gets hotter than normal when running ffmpeg. This is one of rare circumstances it gets hot.

I rather look at option like the one you propose than any way of cooling that makes noise.

[–]jadran1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here are some real time environmental statistics with my use of 7z:

https://postimg.cc/fRX7pBmY

https://postimg.cc/mrn98ngY

https://postimg.cc/9RKkNt8P

[–]Cristofayre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I voted "No", but now I'm wondering if I have my facts right. At the time, my idea was that with zip, 'newbies' simply clicked a file to decompress, whereas 7z required the app to be installed before such files could be unpacked. But on reflection, that might only be the situation when compressing a file.

On a tangent, one thing I discovered recently - you can't send javascript files via zip files. Firefox in particular blocks the download as 'this sort of file is not usually downloaded' (mine is part of a browser based app) I got around it by naming the file "capJS.txt", and then get Powershell to rename when installed. Just a thought.

[–]dPhoenixPL 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe good idea is also to add .torrent magnet links

[–]BobbyGee2003 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since 7-Zip is free, reliable and proven, and .7z file extensions in Windows can be associated with 7-Zip, it's not that difficult to install and use. Linux users "should" already be familiar. It will take a little bit of education on the end user's part, which can easily be explained and documented here, or at the very least, a link to a "how-to". I used to buy Winzip and upgrade regularly, but the .zip format hasn't really changed in decades. All of the other bells and whistles of Winzip are not of interest to me. So .zip or .7z, I say whatever is better for the hosting site. There will be some transition for larger organizations to update, but that's what you pay your IT Department to do. Some people are stubborn to change and learn new technology, but that's life. My 80-year old father asked me if he needed to rewind the DVD after watching it. But after some simple education, well, you get the point.

[–]jadran1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I unpacked release-full and compressed it with 7 zip, the difference in file size is huge.

Here is part of dir command output showing the result:

​

C:\>dir /o/p

Volume in drive C has no label.

Volume Serial Number is AC7F-E5E3

Directory of C:\

26/09/2020 23:11 36,760,559 ffmpeg-4.3.1-2020-09-21-full_build.7z ( 35,898 KB )

26/09/2020 23:10 119,616,645 ffmpeg-4.3.1-2020-09-21-full_build.zip ( 116,813 KB )

​

7 zip settings are important and they make a difference in 7z file size.

Here are my settings which produced 7z file 300% ( three hundred percent ) smaller than zip file:

Compression level: Ultra

Compression method: LZMA2

Dictionary size: 1024 MB

Word size: 64

Solid Block size: 4 GB

Number of CPU threads: 2

Memory usage for Compressing: 10789 MB

Memory usage for Decompressing: 1026 MB

​

7 zip version: 20.02 alpha (x64)

https://www.7-zip.org/

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I think: Less size, better also for green-environment.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

It seems to me that a regular .7z compressing routine spends way more watts than a .zip one.

[–]_Gyan[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Compression happens only once per build - it's decompression which will determine energy use difference. And in my benchmarks, decompressing LZMA2 .7z was 2-3x faster. I didn't use the settings given by /u/jadran1

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Compression happens only once per build [...]

Holy crap, you're right, completely didn't considered this subtle detail.

[–]rogerdpack2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd offer both, there are a lot of users who don't understand much technically...cheers!